Boston Partners Goes Live with Rimes Matrix Investment Management Platform

Boston Partners, a provider of equity strategies, has gone live with Rimes’ Matrix investment management platform as its enterprise data warehouse. The initiative has enabled Boston Partners to streamline its data management operations and integrate data from multiple sources for enterprise reporting, business intelligence, historical retention, and distribution to downstream consuming systems.

The initiative started in January 2023, with the platform going live on 1September 2023. The rapid implementation was orchestrated to ensure a seamless transition, avoiding disruption to day-to-day business operations. More recently, Boston Partners has extended its relationship with Rimes to rely on its ongoing maintenance of the platform and delivery of a constantly improving managed service.

FSB Adds Bank of Communications to 2023 G-SIBs List, Drops Credit Suisse and UniCredit

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has published its list of 2023 global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) using end-2022 data and applying the assessment methodology designed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS).

One bank, China’s Bank of Communications, has been added to the list of G-SIBs that were identified in 2022, and two banks, Credit Suisse and UniCredit, have been removed. The overall number of G-SIBs has decreased from 30 to 29.

FSB member authorities apply requirements to G-SIBs that are higher, in terms of additions to the minimum standards that apply to all internationally active banks under the Core Principles of the BCBS. These requirements include a higher capital buffer, total loss-absorbing capacity, resolvability, and higher supervisory expectations.

A new list of G-SIBs will next be published in November 2024.

KX Releases KDB.AI Server for Enterprise Scale Generative AI

KX, a provider of vector and time-series data management, has announced general availability of KDB.AI Server, a highly-performant, scalable, vector database for time-orientated generative AI and contextual search. Deployable in a single container via Docker, KDB.AI Server offers a smooth setup for various environments, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid systems, allowing businesses to quickly adopt and use its AI capabilities without complex setup processes.

Built to handle high-speed, time-oriented data and multi-modal data processing, KDB.AI Server handles both structured and unstructured enterprise data and enables developers to bring temporal and semantic context and relevancy to AI-powered applications. The server is also optimised for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) patterns, which ensures that, rather than continuously training or fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLM), developers can bring data relevancy to their prompts delivering better accuracy, lower cost, and less need for GPUs.

Immuta Integrates Data Security Platform with Amazon S3 Access Grants

Data security specialist Immuta has made a native integration between its Data Security Platform and the object storage service Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The integration provides customers with streamlined data access control and security across storage and compute platforms using Amazon S3 Access Grants, a new Amazon S3 access control feature that enables customers to manage data permissions at scale for user identities managed by corporate directories.

With the Immuta platform and Amazon S3’s Access Grants, users can centralise access control management and use attribute-based access controls to grant permissions for objects in Amazon S3 storage. Immuta builds on Amazon S3 controls, increasing efficiencies with fewer policies and lower manual effort, reducing operational costs and opening new revenue streams.

“Amazon S3 access control is paramount due to the sheer amount of data that moves through the service,” says Steve Touw, Immuta chief technology officer. “Immuta helps simplify data access and security for data stored in Amazon S3 so users can more safely leverage that data for analytics and AI initiatives. This, paired with Immuta’s ‘write once, apply everywhere’ policy approach, helps customers democratise and increase data usage while still adhering to global regulations.”

Europe’s Insurance and Pensions Firms Back EU Ratings Regulation

European plans to regulate ESG ratings providers has won backing from the region’s pension and insurance industries.

PensionsEurope and Insurance Europe, which represent companies across the bloc, said the European Commission’s (EC) proposed Rating Regulation would “lead to a significant enhancement in the transparency of ESG ratings”.

The EC wants to bring ratings providers under the wings of its regulator to help prevent greenwashing and to ensure greater visibility in the calculations that go into each provider’s rating. Critics describe the firms’ methodologies as “black boxes” for the lack of transparency into how they are determined.

“There is an urgent need for the availability and transparency of ESG data to be improved, not only to fulfil regulatory requirements but, more importantly, to reallocate capital to sustainable assets,” the two organisations wrote in a joint statement.

Novata Expands, Streamlines SFDR Reporting Platform

Novata, an ESG data provider to private markets and investors, has enriched and simplified its Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) compliance tools.

The New York-based company said it has made it easier for clients to integrate their SFDR-aligned data with its platform and has created in-platform tools for reporting on the regulation’s Principle Adverse Indicator tests. The service also offers expert guidance and educational resources to clients.

Novata, which was formed in April 2022, said it now has more than 5,300 clients using its data and reporting platform.

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.