Diginex Collaboration Builds ESG Reporting Tool for Malaysian Companies

ESG technology provider Diginex has collaborated with artificial intelligence technology firm AIKYA to build a sustainability reporting tool to help businesses in Malaysia access sustainable finance opportunities, among other benefits.

DiginexESG is built to enable reporting according to Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosure guidelines as well as local codes.

Informatica Supports Databricks Integration with Google Cloud Expansion

Informatica has incorporated support for Databricks’ Data Intelligence Platform with the expansion of its own Intelligent Data Management Cloud platform on Google Cloud. The move also sees the integration of the artificial intelligence-enabled data management provider’s IDMC with API Center and Cloud Data Access Management (CDAM) services, which run natively on Google Cloud.

ESG Book Teams with BCG to Streamline Data Sourcing and Disclosure

Sustainability data and technology provider ESG Book is working with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to make it easier for financial institutions and companies to report their ESG performance and source ESG data.

The companies have created LEO from ESG Book’s reporting platform and BCG’s Climate and Sustainability Data Template, which helps companies identify and report the data needed to satisfy compliance obligations.

DMI Euro Award Winner WeeFin Raises €25m in Funding Round for ESG Platform

ESG data management startup WeeFin has raised €25 million in a Series B funding round to help develop its SaaS platform for the financial services sector.

The Paris-based startup, which won last year’s Data Management Insight Euro Award for Best Data Management Initiative for ESG, said the capital injection was led by BlackFin Capital Partners, a European fintech fund, as well as existing investors IRIS, Asterion Ventures and Ring Capita.

WeeFin said the additional funds would also help it drive international expansion, including in the UK through its London office.

Formed in 2021, the company provides ESG data optimisation services to 40 customers that oversee a total of €6.9 trillion.

Duco Updates Financial Firms’ Reconciliation Maturity Model

Financial data automation specialist Duco has updated its Reconciliation Maturity Model, which guides institutions through the process of streamlining their reconciliation functions.

The model helps firms establish their level of maturity in moving from manual to automated operations and then shows them how they can get to the next level. Duco said that an organisation with 1,000 controls can potentially save as much as US$38 million annually by following its best-practice guide.

Even institutions at the most advanced stage of maturity can obtain benefits to the tune of $6,000 savings in audit costs by following the guide, Duco said.

Apex to Accelerate Ascend on Google Cloud

Apex Group, a global financial services provider, has signed a deal with Google Cloud to fast-track the development of its Ascend trading, clearing and custody tool.

The New York-based company said it would use Google Cloud’s tools to build an integrated artificial intelligence stack, infrastructure and other tools for data, security and communication.

Apex Ascend was launched last year to provide “a suite of modern capabilities that enable fintech, wealth management and institutional clients to go from idea to launch seamlessly and confidently”, the company said.

The tie-up will see Apex use Google Cloud’s AlloyDB database service, its Big Query artificial intelligence-ready data platform, the Looker intelligence platform and Looker Studio self-service tools as well as Vertex AI, an AI development platform.

Snowflake Hosts JPX’s J-Quants Pro Market Data

JPX Market Innovation & Research’s J-Quants Pro market data sets are now available on Snowflake, giving clients access to Japanese financial market data and analytics.

The new access channel for J-Quants Pro data will complement its API and SFTP connectivity provisions.

Bloomberg Unveils AI-Powered Document Search Tool

Bloomberg has added a generative artificial intelligence module to its research functions, enabling users to query company documents using conversational language.

AI-Powered Document Insights has been built out from the data Behemoth’s AI-Powered Earnings Call Summaries and works alongside its AI-Powered News Summaries. The latest model enables the search and summarisation of documents from a library of more than 200 million company documents and from the Bloomberg News trove of articles, which is updated with 5,000 new pieces of writing each day.

The models behind AI-Powered Document Insights have been trained to understand the nuanced language of finance and created with the help of analysts in the Bloomberg Intelligence research business.

S&P Global Extends ESG Data Offering with Snowflake

A new public and private entity ESG data service is available to clients of S&P Global Market Intelligence on the Snowflake platform, extending a tie-up between the two companies.

Part of S&P Global’s Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Insights Platform, the Global Entity Linking and ESG Data Management Services offering enables clients to clean and map ESG data to traded entities and then subject it to artificial intelligence-led analytics and models on Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud.

The companies said this gives a “unique” view of clients’ entities, hierarchies and linked reference data.

The new tool will “effectively manage the vast volumes associated with sustainability data while offering our clients the flexibility to quickly and seamlessly onboard and integrate new data sources”, said Vikas Sahni, Head of Software for Enterprise Solutions at S&P Global.

The latest innovation from S&P Global and Snowflake is among a number of products and services that vendors are offering as they seek to meet growing demand from financial institutions for private as well as public entity data. Volatility in equity markets and narrowing spreads on once-illiquid fixed-income assets has prompted investors to seek higher returns in alternative assets, such as private equity and credit.

Alternative markets are more opaque than the public markets in which institutions have hitherto largely operated, forcing them to retool their data operations to source intel on companies, funds and lenders. Data on private companies is also often lacking the lineage and metadata to link it to reference and other datasets.

The Global Entity Linking and ESG Data Management Services builds on a collaboration between the two companies forged in 2020 when S&P Global announced that its financial, textual, ESG and alternative data would be made available through Snowflake.

Thai Identity Tech Firm Finema Named Latest Asian Virtual GLEIF Issuer

Finema, a Thailand-based digital identity technology company, has become the first Southeast Asian issuer of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation’s verifiable Legal Entity Identifiers (vLEI).

As a Qualified vLEI Issuer, Finema will be responsible for providing the digital equivalent of GLEIF’s ISO-recognised identity recognition and validation certifier to participating companies in the region.

The vLEI is a virtual identifier that is attached to participating companies and people associated with them, enabling investors and counterpanes to establish a trust-based relationship safe in the knowledge that the organisation is who it claims to be.

Finema is the latest Asian QVI to be announced by GLEIF, following the appointment of China Financial Certification Authority (CFCA) as the first such body in China. GLEIF chief executive Alexandre Kech told Data Management Insight earlier this year that the Basel, Switzerland-based not-for-profit would focus on expanding in Asia as it seeks to bring transparency and trust to often opaque markets.

“Sweeping digitalisation across the global economy provides unprecedented opportunities and incentives to transform the underlying systems organisations use to trust and be trusted,” Kech said after the Finema announcement. “This will free international capital flows and unlock access to the unlimited opportunities of the global market.”