Clausematch Enters Italy with Banca Intesa Sanpaolo Partnership

Following a meeting at a FinTech Innovation Lab hosted by Banca Intesa Sanpaolo, the bank has implemented implemented the ClauseMatch platform within its Cost Management Office governance area. An advanced online document management and collaboration solution, the space is designed to optimise and streamline the process of creating and managing intra-group service contracts.

ACA Compliance Opens New Office in Birmingham

GRC tech specialist ACA Compliance has expanded its European presence with an office in Birmingham, UK. Key to the services offered from the new location will be ACA’s Analysis and Review Centre (ARC). The ARC helps to reduce the workload of Chief Compliance Officers (CCOs) and in-house compliance teams by allowing them to pass on executional regulatory responsibilities to ACA. According to Thomson Reuters, over a third (36%) of global financial services firms now outsource all or part of their compliance function.

TNS Reaches Connectivity, Hosting and Market Data Access Agreement with HKEX

Transaction Network Services (TNS) and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) have signed an agreement for connectivity, managed hosting and market data access giving market participants greater choice on how to trade with the HKEX. The agreement will provide local and international low latency connectivity to the exchange and between trading partners. TNS will offer traders managed hosting options at the HKEX data centre and will become an application service provider for HKEX equities and derivatives market data. The TNS offer will include market data feeds from the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Futures Exchange.

Horizon and ULTUMUS Extend Partnership with Dividend Forecast Data

Horizon Software, a provider of electronic trading solutions and algorithmic technology, and ULTUMUS, a provider of data services for index and ETF products, have extended their partnership to enable the pricing, sourcing and trading of ETFs with a comprehensive dividend dataset integrated within the Horizon trading platform. Aggregating and distributing additional ETF dividend forecasts data on top of index and reference data, all as a single source, is expected to benefit Horizon’s clients in terms of trading performance, flexibility and accuracy.

McObject Offers eXtremeDB on AWS

McObject has has made its eXtremeDB high-performance computing database management system available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The company’s decision to add a pay-as-you-go AWS version of eXtremeDB was driven by capital markets participants as they move to the cloud. The cloud version of eXtremeDB replicates all of the in-memory database’s features, including options to use the system as a client/server model or embedded DBMS.

Interactive Brokers Adds Access to Moscow Exchange for Worldwide Clients

Global electronic broker Interactive Brokers has opened access to the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) for its worldwide clients. The company previously provided trading in MOEX listed stocks exclusively for Russian residents. The extended arrangement provides access to MOEX via Raiffeisenbank, which holds a Russian broker licence. The ability to trade directly on MOEX outside of Russia and through a local broker is supported by MOEX’s Sponsored Market Access (SMA) model, low latency, and fully redundant global point of presence architecture.

New Change FX Joins IOWA.rocks Financial Data Marketplace

New Change FX (NCFX), a data and analytics business, has joined the financial data marketplace operated by IOWA.rocks. NCFX allows market participants requiring objective trade cost measurement capabilities to quickly calculate all related expenses against a recognised and registered independent data feed. NCFX is ESMA approved and FCA authorised administrator of live spot FX benchmarks for the FX market. The company creates data by aggregating aggregated live market bids and offers in real time, and calculates benchmark rates 20 times a second, giving clients competitive advantage as
FX execution can happen immediately, rather than waiting for delayed ‘fixing’ windows.

SmartSearch Wins Equity Investment

RegTech software provider and AML specialist SmartSearch has received a growth equity investment from Marlin Equity Partners, a global investment firm with a substantial software funding track record. SmartSearch enables organisations to carry out AML checks without requiring clients to provide identity documents. Its automated verification approach allows individual AML checks to be processed in less than 30 seconds while business checks take less than three minutes.

It claims to be the only organisation in the UK with the ability to verify individuals and companies in the UK and internationally all in a single platform via a browser or API, with full Sanction, PEP and adverse media screening and then ongoing monitoring.

Emblaze shows significantly reduced latency in STAC benchmark tests

Exablaze, a provider of ultra-low latency network devices, has broken the previous best STAC-T0 benchmark results with its newly-announced ExaNIC FDK-XP (Firmware Development Kit Extension Pack). It has slashed latency to less than half the previous benchmarked best, recording actionable latencies of 31-44 nanoseconds, signalling a marked advance in tick-to-trade system performance. In the STAC benchmarks, Exablaze demonstrated a high degree of determinism, with maximum latency remaining constant even while running at 11 million packets per second (7.72 Gbps), 3.4 times the maximum ingress (message) rate tested previously.

ICAP Information expands data products offer with EURO IRO and Global Inflation datasets

ICAP Information, part of TP ICAP, has extended its data products offer with the release of datasets covering EURO Interest Rate Options (IRO) and Global Inflation. By making these datasets commercially available for the first time, TP ICAP aims to provide market participants with greater transparency in a traditionally opaque asset class.

The information in the datasets can be used for price discovery and accurate securities pricing in the front office, as well as risk management, valuation and independent price verification in middle and back office functions. The information also comes with historical data.

The company says the EURO IRO dataset provides an unprecedented level of coverage and granularity in the asset class, while the Global Inflation dataset is a broader offering, encompassing a wide variety of inflation data from across the world.

Ovie Koloko, global head of product management at TP ICAP, explains: “Since last year, the Data & Analytics and Global Broking divisions have been working closely together, the aim being to take advantage of the brokers’ market leading position, gather data from across the business, and make it available to the wider community. Filling existing gaps in quality or coverage, or where information has simply never been accessible before, has been our initial focus.”

Looking forward, the company hopes to create a virtuous circle based on disseminating information more widely, driving better analytics and services in its broking division, and gaining better data. Koloko says the EURO IRO and Global Inflation datasets are just a start and customers can expect more innovative data packages over the coming year.