Castle Island Ventures Leads $1.9 million Investment in CoinMetrics

Coin Metrics, a provider of crypto asset market and network data, has closed a $1.9 million seed round of venture funding. Castle Island Ventures led the financing, with participation from Fidelity Investments, Highland Capital Partners and Dragonfly Capital. Tim Rice, co-founding CEO of CoinMetrics, says: “Our approach to aggregating crypto asset market data will use the guiding principles from the IOSCO Financial Benchmarks. We intend to bridge the wild west crypto market data world by translating fair value measurements, similar to FASB 157, and providing a credible confidence level assessment of fair value pricing for any particular market.”

Brexit: FIA Co-Signs Letter to European Commission on Equivalence of Trading Venues

The FIA, along with numerous other industry organisations, has signed a letter to European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis regarding the equivalence of UK trading venues. The letter requests urgent action by the EU authorities to adopt equivalence decisions regarding UK trading venues under EMIR and MIFID in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal, explaining the impact on EU27 market participants and European derivatives markets in the case of a no-deal Brexit. You can access the letter here.

Ascent Announces AI-Driven Change Management Service

Regulatory compliance firm Ascent Regtech, which offers a cloud-based Intelligence-as-a-Service platform, has launched a new change management product that automatically delivers targeted and bespoke regulatory updates to the customer. The product is designed to improve horizon scanning and change management processes by delivering a targeted feed of new regulations and rule changes that apply specifically to the customer. A new feature, Change Identification, provides a side-by-side comparison of the previous and newly updated versions of the rule text, while the Impact Analysis function shows the impact to the customer’s tasks which contain their controls, policies and/or procedures, enabling further action.

Solidatus Opens New Singapore Office

Data lineage solutions provider Solidatus has opened a new office in Singapore to service the Asia-Pacific market. The expansion follows two successful trade missions to Asia with the UK Department of Trade in 2018: the Hong Kong FinTech Week 2018 and the Singapore FinTech Festival 2018. “The decision to expand our presence in APAC was a logical step,” said Solidatus Co-Founder Philip Miller. “It is a very dynamic region, holding enormous potential, and we look forward to helping local, data-rich businesses of all sizes optimise their governance, system transformation and regulatory reporting needs.”

CubeLogic Launches Version 7.0 of RiskCubed Platform

CubeLogic, which provides business intelligence-enabled risk management solutions, has announced the launch of its latest RiskCubed platform, with updates including new HTML5/Angular technology to improve user experience. The Credit Risk Cube now includes counterparty centric navigation, extended portfolio capabilities and streamlined workflows for bulk margin call management. The Market Risk Cube has a new meta data-driven tabular Position Cube to simplify deployment and improve business reporting. The Regulatory Cube offers ETD reporting under REGIS-TR and BREXIT readiness. A generic rules engine also means that users can visually configure, edit and audit trail data enrichment rules applied to source data interfaces.

Bank of China Selects Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX for Australian Regulatory Reporting

Bank of China has chosen Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting to provide its regulatory reporting calculation and submission software for its operations in Australia. OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting is set up to use a single source of data to ensure consistency, reconciliation and accuracy and includes Wolters Kluwer’s Regulatory Update Service, which actively monitors regulation across 30 jurisdictions.

“We have commenced working on the implementation quickly to meet the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority’s Economic and Financial Statistical Reporting (EFS) Phase 1,” confirmed Felix Lin, Senior Manager of Bank of China’s Sydney Branch.

Engadine Selects Red Deer’s MiFID II Research Management Solution

Hedge fund Engadine Partners has selected Red Deer’s MiFID II research management option. Engadine will use the solution to manage inducement risk, track research consumption across channels, assess value, and manage budgets in compliance with MiFID II. The firm will subsequently be able to conduct broker votes based on consumption and valuation metrics. The solution captures and attributes research consumption across email, chat and voice channels, and includes an Outlook plugin and mobile application. Its budget management function allows firms to allocate budgets at the fund, strategy or individual level and track contributions, with alerting to monitor budgetary thresholds.

Heliocor Partners with LAN2LAN on KYC/AML

Heliocor, an emerging regulatory technology company based in London, has announced a partnership agreement with UK-based LAN2LAN for professional services and implementation of its AML/KYC offerings. The agreement will enable Heliocor to take advantage of LAN2LAN’s network infrastructure design and implementation skills to implement its fraud reducing products. LAN2LAN offer support across a broad spectrum of installation options: including cloud, hybrid cloud, secure wireless, mobility and cybersecurity. The agreement will leverage LAN2LAN’s Robolitics and Dokstor products to increase security and reduce costs associated with processing fraud detection during transaction, principally for KYC and AML checks.

SX Sells its 18.6% Stake in IRESS

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has entered an agreement to sell its 18.6% stake in IRESS, terminating an 18-year investment in the developer of software and services for financial markets and wealth management. The sale has been underwritten at a fixed price of $11.95 per share and is expected to realise gross proceeds of $385 million. ASX managing director Dominic Stevens says: “IRESS has been an attractive investment for ASX over many years. But we believe now is the right time to divest as it no longer provides the strategic value to ASX that it once did.”

Solidatus Targets Asia-Pacific from Office in Singapore

Solidatus, provider of a data lineage and business relationship mapping solution, has opened an office in Singapore to address Asia-Pacific markets. The expansion comes off the back of two trade missions to Asia in 2018, both of which were at the invitation of the UK Department of International Trade. John Berven, who has experience of the region and spent 18 years at State Street Global Markets, where he managed foreign exchange sales team that covered institutional investors in Hong Kong and Singapore for five years, will lead the Singapore office and be the first Solidatus employee outside the UK.