Encompass Receives £2m Grant for AI Project

RegTech Encompass has been awarded a £2 million grant from Scottish Enterprise to develop an AI engine to accompany its KYC product offering. The funding, part of a £4.9, project, will help customers to accurately find risk relevant information about their organisations and investments, from a wide-ranging pool of data. “We have a long-standing relationship with Encompass, having supported the development of its initial KYC product. It’s great to see it now branching out into this new area of AI with its adverse news screening tool – for which there is a strong and immediate market demand,” says Scottish Enterprise.

JP Morgan Invests in Fund Administration Specialist Arcesium

New York-based investment management technology and post-trade services provider Arcesium has won strategic funding from JP Morgan. Arcesium was originally launched by investment and technology giant D E Shaw Group in 2015 on a platform developed for its own post-trade activities, with backing from Blackstone, which became one of its first clients. Its Securities Services business provides independent fund administration and comprehensive outsourcing solutions to alternative fund managers, asset managers, and asset owners via an automated technology platform.

Swiss Indices Endorsed Under the EU Benchmarks Regulation

SIX has received the approval by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority that its major Swiss Indices are compliant with the EU Benchmarks Regulation. The approval was granted for a total of 39 equity, fixed income and money market indices. The flagship indices SMI and SARON (the Swiss franc reference rate) are also included.

The aim of the endorsement application was to ensure that all indices that serve today as underlying for financial products in the EU can be continued to be used as benchmarks under the BMR. The endorsed benchmarks include the flagship equity indices, several bond indices, and the widely used Swiss Reference Rates.

TP ICAP Implements MDXT for Client Content

In early February, MDX Technology (MDXT), announced that TP ICAP’s Data & Analytics business has gone live with MDXT’s data distribution solution. MDXT was integrated with the broker’s Data & Analytics division’s core infrastructure to collect real-time data for direct distribution to clients via multiple end points, including Microsoft Excel, web portals, mobile apps and Symphony apps.

FCA Paper Calls Latency Arbitrage ‘Tax’ on Non-HFT Traders

In a further signal that regulators may seek to address what they see as information and process asymmetries within HFT firms’ trading strategies, the UK’s FCA last month published a research paper claiming that latency arbitrage results in a global “tax” on non-HFT investors in equity markets. The paper says HFT firms’ use of faster information access and more efficient processes to complete trades gives them a speed advantage over other players, and suggests that eliminating latency arbitrage would result in a 17% reduction in trading costs.

Nasdaq Acquires OneReport to Accelerate ESG Reporting and Workflow Solution

Nasdaq has acquired OneReport, a privately-held provider of corporate responsibility and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data management and reporting services. OneReport will accelerate the delivery of Nasdaq’s recently announced ESG reporting and workflow solution, to be named Nasdaq OneReport. The platform is available to companies as part of the suite of solutions offered by Nasdaq’s Corporate Services business. Since 2003, OneReport’s software platform has helped organisations navigate corporate responsibility frameworks, pilot the information capture and response process, and deliver ESG data to ratings agencies and other stakeholders.

TRG Screen Completes Integration of FITS and INFOmatch with PEAR

TRG Screen has competed the integration of its spend management platforms FITS and INFOmatch with its PEAR exchange compliance database. INFOmatch & FITS give users clarity they need to take control of market data, research, software and enterprise subscription spend across the enterprise, while PEAR consolidates exchange information, including policies and pricing, into a searchable online database. The integration should help TRG clients get efficiencies and gain a complete view across all aspects of their market data subscriptions.

London Metal Exchange Partners Trading Technologies

The London Metal Exchange has partnered Trading Technologies (TT) to supply the exchange’s trading participants with direct access to the exchange via the TT front-end interface. TT will replace the LME’s current GUI when its new trading platform launches in 2021. Delivered via software-as-a-service, the TT platform will provide LME members and members’ clients around the world with connectivity to the exchange from virtually any location and device. Members and clients will have access to TT’s trading tools, including the MD Trader ladder, options trading functionality, and TT mobile apps for Android and iOS.

Redline Onboards 24Exchange to Expand Support for NDF Trading

Redline Trading Solutions, a provider of high-performance market data and order execution systems for automated trading, is supporting 24Exchange, a new offshore, multi-asset class, OTC platform, on its InRush Ticker Plant and Order Execution Gateway for its FX clients.

24Exchange becomes a market data and routing destination on the Redline Trading Solutions Network with mutual clients benefiting from the ability to trade non-deliverable forwards (NDFs)with greater transparency and enhanced liquidity. Mark Skalabrin, CEO at Redline, comments: “NDFs are becoming an increasingly important part of the FX trading landscape.”

Options Collaborates with Pure Storage on All-Flash Storage-as-a-Service

Options, a provider of cloud-enabled managed services, has collaborated with Pure Storage to deliver all-NVMe (non-volatile memory express), all-flash cloud storage to capital markets. Built on Storage-as-a-Service infrastructure from Pure Storage, the solution allows Options’ customers to reliably store data at scale and access the information instantly across its global financial network. Customers can also more effectively deploy containerised environments, large-scale datasets and other low-latency applications. Options’ Pure as-a-Service deployment will be integrated into the firm’s enterprise-grade network, comprised of 40+ data centre sites worldwide.