ISS ESG to Provide Sustainability Data to Southern German State

ISS ESG will provide sustainability data that will help drive investment decision making by Germany’s Baden-Wurttemberg state government.

The sustainability arm of ISS STOXX said the contract will see the financial research and technology company support the state’s mandate to invest its public funds in sustainable assets. That will include supplying data and metrics on carbon and climate, energy and resources, EU Taxonomy alignment and other investment themes.

The southern state of Baden-Württemberg, which is centred on Stuttgart, has a total of around €17 billion of assets. Its parliament passed a law earlier this year that added sustainability to a list of asset characteristics that must shape its investment decisions, alongside profitability, liquidity and security.

Yotascale Brings Yota AI Assist Cloud Cost Management Solution to Market

Palo Alto, California based Yotascale, a specialist in cloud cost management in digital organisations, has brought Yota AI Assist to market with the claim that it is the first FinOps copilot powered by Generative AI. Yota AI Assist continuously analyses AWS, Azure, GCP, Snowflake, Datadog, Databricks and other infrastructure costs providing insights and optimisation recommendations for each manager based on their objectives and role, keeping it high level if you are the CFO and making it detailed if you are an engineer.

The solution is based on Yotascale’s extensive industry domain knowledge in cloud cost management and total platform engineering cost management. Asim Razzaq, CEO of Yotascale, says: “Our goal was to supercharge FinOps and platform engineering teams with cloud spend intelligence, so they never again experience the anxiety of feeling like costs are out of control, with no path to bring them down.” Or as one user put it: “This is really good because you don’t need to click click click, just ask a question.”

Informatica Extends Access to Intelligent Data Management Platform in Canada

Informatica, an enterprise cloud data management provider, has established a Microsoft Azure pod in Canada for its Canadian customers. For Informatica customers that use the Azure ecosystem – particularly those in highly-regulated sectors such as financial services – the pod provides access to the company’s Intelligent Data Management Platform (IDMC) to manage complex and fragmented data estates, better comply with strict data residency requirements and support complex cloud modernisation projects.

It also gives Canadian Azure customers access to the latest Informatica-Microsoft integrations, including IDMC as an Azure Native Service and its integration with Microsoft Fabric.

With the availability of the Azure pod, Canadian customers can purchase IDMC as an Azure SaaS solution through the Azure Marketplace.

Singapore Launches Platform to Host Reported ESG Data

Financial institutions in Singapore will soon have access to AI-powered digital tools that will help them “collect, access and act upon” ESG data.

Grnprnt, which is pronounced Greenprint, has been created by the city’s Monetary Authority (MAS) to help corporates automate the reporting of sustainability data that financial companies can then incorporate into their own workflows.

The platform, part of MAS’ Project Greenprint to foster sustainable markets in the Southeast Asian city, will be open to companies large and small and eventually encompass overseas businesses. MAS said grnprnt will also be constructed so that it can be integrated with institution’s data platforms.

“Gprnt provides a key data bridge that can generate the trusted and high quality ESG data needed by the financial sector to more efficiently allocate capital towards green and transition initiatives,” said MAS managing director Ravi Menon. “By harnessing generative AI and data APIs at scale, Gprnt will greatly simplify sustainability reporting for SMEs, and in doing so unlock the data needed by the public and private sectors to support SMEs’ sustainability journeys.”

The platform will be operational in the first quarter of 2024.

KX Expands Integration with Microsoft Azure to Foster AI Application Development

KX, a provider of vector and time-series data management, has announced two offerings optimised for Microsoft Azure customers: the integration of KDB.AI with Azure Machine Learning and Azure OpenAI Service; and KX Copilot. The integration of KDB.AI with Azure Machine Learning and Azure OpenAI Service allows developers that require turnkey technology stacks to speed up the process of building and deploying AI applications by accessing fully configured instances of KDB.AI, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure OpenAI Service inside their customer subscription.

KX Copilot helps business eases the execution of complex queries on substantial datasets. Using the Azure-powered KX Copilot and a Microsoft Teams plug-in, customers can leverage vectorised data housed in kdb Insights Enterprise to facilitate better queries using natural language prompts. Users can then manage and explore the data more intuitively to generate critical real-time business insights.

Ashok Reddy, CEO at KX, says: “Generative AI is the defining technology of our age. The introduction of these services will help organisations harness its power for greater risk management, enhanced productivity and real-time decision-making.”

General availability of each KX offering in Azure Marketplace is expected in 2024.

Canoe Intelligence Engages Amplify Advisory as First Partner in Canoe Pro Plan

Canoe Intelligence, a technology provider to the alternatives industry, has released Canoe Pro in collaboration with Amplify Advisory Solutions, a professional services consulting firm that has signed up to the Canoe Pro partner network. By combining Canoe’s alternative investment technology with specialised support from partners such as Amplify, Canoe Pro delivers a unified and comprehensive offering designed to become an extension of the clients’ operations team.

Tim Loughrey, vice president of client success at Canoe Intelligence, says: “Canoe Pro is about equipping clients with the tools and support they need to navigate change and achieve their objectives in a perpetually evolving landscape. It represents the next step in our mission to empower our clients and optimise data management for alternative assets.”

Bloomberg Introduces Intra-Firm Chatbots for Enhanced Digital Collaboration

Bloomberg has launched a new service, IB Connect: Intra-Firm Chatbots, designed to enhance digital collaboration for Bloomberg Terminal users. The add-on allows users to integrate proprietary chatbots into Instant Bloomberg (IB) chat rooms, facilitating the sharing of internal system information and improving in-house business intelligence discovery.

The new service supports two types of chatbots. Q&A Intra-Firm Chatbots enable users to extract actionable intelligence directly into chatrooms, addressing queries using data from internal systems. Notification Intra-Firm Chatbots provide timely updates and alerts within the IB environment, ensuring critical information is seamlessly communicated during workflows. This integration uses natural language processing to structure unstructured IB data, which clients can customise for their unique tech stacks and workflows, adhering to Bloomberg’s API protocols.

DTCC Streamlines OTC Derivatives Data Access

DTCC has launched OTC Direct Connect, a service providing access to OTC derivatives transactions data that is reportable in the US and Canada. The service eliminates manual data collection and providers subscribers in derivatives markets with access to a fast and frictionless data delivery solution that can help them manage market risks and trading risk factors in near real-time.

“This solution systematically and seamlessly disseminates OTC derivatives transaction data to interested parties,” says Tim Lind, managing director of DTCC Data Services. “OTC Direct Connect improves transparency in the OTC derivatives markets, as intended by regulatory disclosure mandates, by providing subscribers with improved information access.”

UK Said to Propose Regulation of ESG Ratings Providers

The UK is to unveil plans to regulate ESG ratings providers, according to a report in the Financial Times. The proposal is expected to be announced in January, the report said Whitehall citing sources.

Any such submission would indicate a change of approach by the country’s regulators, who until now have suggested only that firms providing ratings should work to a voluntary code of conduct to help reduce confusion among investors.

ESG ratings have been criticised for offering widely different ratings from each other on the same companies, making it difficult for investors to assess which would best suit their mandates.

Broadridge Offers AI Tools to Help Asset Managers Optimise Product, Strategy and Distribution Decisions

Broadridge Financial Solutions is offering two AI-enabled analytics tools to optimise product, strategy and distribution decision-making for asset managers. DistributionAI is a natural language digital analyst tool within Broadridge’s Distribution Insight platform that provides access to proprietary global asset management market intelligence and research reports to help asset managers optimise distribution, product development, and sales and marketing.

Global Demand Model measures and analyses demand for asset management products today and in the future. It tracks over $100 trillion of global assets and uses AI-driven models to understand the relationship between asset flows and thousands of predictive capital market and macroeconomic features, coupled to human in the loop systems. This equips asset managers with more confidence in the analysis of current and future product demand.