SAP Fioneer Launches Fist ESG Tool for FIs

SAP’s FinTech arm SAP Fioneer has unveiled its first ESG assessment tool for investment portfolios. The Fioneer ESG KPI Engine is available for on-prem or cloud-based platforms and enables banks and insurers to manage portfolios according to particular KPIs.

Deutsche Börse Announces Final Tender Result for Takeover of SimCorp

Deutsche Börse has announced the final tender result for its public takeover of SimCorp. Including open market purchases, Deutsche Börse now holds approximately 94% of all SimCorp shares, excluding SimCorp’s treasury shares. The offer is expected to be settled and closed on 29 September 2023. Deutsche Börse will seek to initiate and complete a compulsory acquisition of the SimCorp shares held by the remaining minority shareholders as soon as possible and have SimCorp shares removed from the official listing on Nasdaq Copenhagen.

Brightwell Selects Duco’s Data Automation Platform

Brightwell, a defined benefit services provider, has selected Duco’s data automation platform as part of its target operating model transformation. The platform will be used in Duco’s investment operations department to replace an inflexible legacy system that was limiting the firm’s growth and will enable Brightwell to normalise data and consolidate reconciliations for FX, OTC and ETD derivatives, fixed income and cash balances as trading volumes grow. Features such as advanced filters, transaction rollup rules, conditional rules and the Data Prep module will also help Brightwell reduce the number of exceptions, allow them to build complex matching rules, and bring down the number of false positives.

China’s E Fund Expands Collaboration with Bloomberg

E Fund Management Co. Ltd., one of the largest fund management companies in China, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to expand its collaboration with Bloomberg. The expansion will cover areas including financial information, technology and climate change, and is designed to assist E Fund in accelerating its global development.

Xiaoyan Liu, co-chairman of the board and CEO of E Fund, says: “E Fund has been consistently advancing its global development strategy, aiming to provide global clients with better products and services. We are pleased to be working with Bloomberg to create long-term, sustainable value for our investors.”

Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg, adds: “China’s increasing integration with global capital markets has significance for investors everywhere. We’re glad to support China’s leading financial institutions as they expand.”

CDP Urges G20 to Back Nature Disclosures

Nature-related impact disclosures should be made mandatory for financial institutions and companies, CDP has urged on the eve of a meeting of the world’s 20 richest countries and trading blocs. The disclosure organisation warned the G20 that without such data, greenwashing could remain a challenge and that biodiversity would suffer.

KX Adds kdb Insights and kdb Insights Enterprise to Google Cloud Marketplace

KX, a providers of vector and time-series data management, has announced the native availability of kdb Insights and kdb Insights Enterprise on Google Cloud Marketplace. This is a significant milestone in KX’s partnership with Google Cloud and will allow customers to accelerate AI, machine learning, IoT automation, and generative AI-powered applications on Google Cloud.

Ashok Reddy, CEO at KX, says: “Combining our real time analytics and our vector database with the elasticity and scalability of Google Cloud infrastructure will help enterprises rapidly accelerate their journey towards more real time and effective business decision making.”

SDX Adopts Digital Token Identifier

SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) had become the first private distributed ledger technology (DLT) based financial market infrastructure to adopt the Digital Token Identifier Foundation’s ISO 24165 Digital Token Identifier (DTI) standard. The DTI standard provides a unique identifier for digital ledgers, tokens, and cryptocurrencies, and has been recommended by ESMA as a risk management measure for the EU’s DLT Pilot programme.

ESG Book Chosen to Support Data Project in Asia

ESG Book will provide data to an Asian-based project to address gaps in the sustainability data record. ESG Book, a open data initiative led by vendor Arabesque and backed by a dozen major banks, will be among providers of information to the Sustainable Finance Institute Asia’s (SFIA) Single Access Point for ESG Data (SAFE) initiative. ASIA is a collaboration between multiple stakeholders in the Asia Pacific region.

MSCI and Google to Harness Generative AI in ESG Data Offering

MSCI and Google Cloud are to jointly create generative AI solutions in an expansion of a collaborative effort to build a data marketplace for ESG investors. MSCI intends to offer the technology driven by Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, along with its climate tools BigQuery Geospatial and Earth Engine.

Executives Planning to Substantially Increase ESG Data Spend

ESG data demand is on the rise among portfolio managers, with the vast majority planning to substantially increase spending on the resource, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The financial data giant’s ESG Data Acquisition and Management Survey of more than 100 managers and executives found that 92 per cent would boost spending on ESG data by more than 10 per cent and almost a fifth would increase it by 50 per cent.

The survey found, however, that around half of respondents said that contending with new ESG content and managing multiple data feeds was a challenge.