Beam Raises Seed Funding for New Compliance Venture

Former Facebook and Paypal executives including Ben Duranske, former Facebook Chief Compliance Officer, have raised $9 million in Series A funding for Beam Solutions, a transaction monitoring platform designed to tackle financial crime and money laundering. The funding round was led by Greycroft Ventures and Canaan, while other investors included Broadhaven, Conversion Capital, Plug and Play and Slow Ventures; and Silicon Valley Bank also provided a $2 million debt facility.

Beam uses machine learning and new data sources to offer compliance software for fintechs, banks, broker-dealers, entities utilizing blockchain, and other regulated financial groups. Its API-based SaaS platform promises to help customers reduce false positives, meet AML and KYC requirements and maximise compliance resources.

RecordSure Partners with KPMG to Enter Australia

UK-based data management provider RecordSure has joined up with KPMG Australia to deliver its customer trust and transparency solutions to Australian financial institutions. RecordSure uses AI and machine learning to capture data from customer interactions in order to improve regulatory compliance: including the use of analytics and automation tools to record and transpose speech to text, review documents such as emails and live chat and analyses the resulting data. As the Australian implementation provider, KPMG will deliver Recordsure to clients within its existing suite of risk and business transformation capabilities.

Beeks Financial Cloud Partners BeQuant Exchange

In a partnership facilitated by Equinix, Beeks Financial Cloud will host cryptocurrency exchange BeQuant’s matching engine on Beeks’ network within the Equinix LD4 data centre in London. . Operating in nine Equinix data centres, Beeks provides ultra-low latency hosting and connectivity. CEO of Beeks Financial Cloud, says: “The cryptocurrency market is constantly expanding, and by adding exchanges such as BeQuant to our portfolio, Beeks is able to facilitate access to these markets for our customers. Guaranteeing that no customer will have greater access speed than another is a unique offering and we are delighted to announce this partnership with BeQuant.”

Gluskin Sheff + Associates Selects Broadridge Investment Management Platform

Wealth manager Gluskin Sheff + Associates has enlisted the help of Broadridge Financial Services to implement the latter’s hosted investment management platform and gain access to order management, compliance and data analytics capabilities. Jeff Moody, president and executive officer at Gluskin Sheff, says working with Broadridge allows the firm to pursue and execute growth opportunities with technology rather than increased headcount. The firm selected Broadridge Financial Services’ solution after ensuring it would provide exceptional service for its client base. Going forward, Gluskin Sheff plans to use Broadridge’s platform to optimise workflows and automation across an increasing set of asset classes.

AkinovA Marketplace Selects Trading Technology from Aquis

AkinovA has selected Aquis Technologies, the financial and regulatory technology arm of Aquis Exchange, to provide part of its marketplace technology stack. AkinovA and Aquis have already developed specific functionalities and services for use in AkinovA’s electronic marketplace for the transfer and trading of (re)insurance risks, and AkinovA is incorporating Aquis solutions including the vendor’s matching engine and surveillance system. Assistance in the post-trade environment will involve reporting and a first line surveillance service.

AkinovA selected Aquis for its cutting-edge technology, desire to innovate and range of solutions and services.

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.