OpenFin Secures £35 Million in Series D Funding to Boost Adoption of its OS

OpenFin, the operating system (OS) for enterprise productivity, has raised $35 million in a Series D investment round led by Bank of America, with significant contributions from Pivot Investment Partners and ING Ventures. CME Ventures, CTC Venture Capital, SC Ventures and Tribeca Early Stage Partners also participated. The investment aims to fast-track the adoption of OpenFin OS across the financial industry and beyond. Presently used by over 3,800 banks and asset management firms in more than 60 countries, OpenFin’s web-based OS is increasingly becoming a standard in financial services.

The latest funding comes amid a period of record growth for OpenFin, spurred by the swift adoption of OpenFin Workspace, the OS’s visual interface. Launched in 2021, the Workspace includes an app launcher, notification centre, universal search and enterprise browser, helping to simplify user experiences across internal and reduce operational risk.

TMX Group and Clearstream Banking Set to Launch Canada’s First Domestic Triparty Repo Capability

TMX Group Limited and Clearstream Banking S.A., part of Deutsche Börse Group, have announced plans to introduce an automated Canadian Collateral Management Service (CCMS), including the first domestic triparty repo capability in Canada. Developed collaboratively, the CCMS aims to provide a customised mobility and liquidity solution for Canada’s secured finance industry, with the new service enabling clients to meet the continuously evolving collateral demands of current markets.

Scheduled for launch in Q3 2023, the CCMS is intended to optimise and collateralise securities finance activities across the Canadian market. Initially, the CCMS will cater to participants in Canada’s secured funding market, enhancing transaction cycle efficiency. Additionally, it will facilitate the industry’s shift to a T+1 settlement cycle for Canadian and US markets in 2024, boosting efficiency and collateral mobility while reducing operational risk.

Principal Financial Group Selects QUODD’s Universe+ for Tailored Market Data Access

QUODD, a market data on demand provider for the global financial services sector, has announced that Principal Financial Group has become part of its growing client base for the Universe+ platform. Universe+ is an API-driven, cloud-based solution offering comprehensive security pricing, reference data, and analytics across all asset classes, including mutual fund, equities, and fixed income pricing data, specifically designed as a middle to back-office research tool.

Universes+’s capabilities are a cornerstone of QUODD’s digital offering, allowing users to monitor price fluctuations, access reference data and corporate actions on demand, and manage price validations and challenges. The platform facilitates on-demand market data consumption across all business lines and operational workflows, making it an effective tool for middle and back-office functions.

KX Collaborates with AWS to Make kdb Insights a Managed Service on Amazon FinSpace

KX, creator of the kdb+ time series and analytics database, has teamed up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to make kdb Insights available as a fully managed service on Amazon FinSpace. Managed kdb Insights enables investment banks and hedge funds to launch, configure, run, and scale capital markets analytics and AI workloads with just a few clicks. Firms already using applications that rely on kdb Insights can migrate to AWS in days without modifying queries or workflows, and gain the agility, scalability, high availability, and security of AWS.

Ashok Reddy, CEO at KX, says: “With the launch of kdb Insights on Amazon FinSpace, our customers can experience unparalleled levels of price versus performance thanks to the market-leading capabilities of our Data Timehouse technology and the powerhouse that is AWS.”

ISS ESG and Qontigo Launch Joint Biodiversity Index

ISS ESG, the sustainable investment arm of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), and index compiler Qontigo have created a jointly branded biodiversity benchmark timed for release on the United Nations’ International Day for Biological Diversity. The ISS STOXX Biodiversity Index Suite enables investors to align their portfolios with biodiversity impact targets and applicable UN Sustainable Development Goals.

London Stock Exchange’s Data Centre Migration Boosts Market Quality and Efficiency

The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has reported substantial improvements in market quality and performance following its data centre migration and upgrade in February this year. The data centre, which caters to the London Stock Exchange, Turquoise, and TRADEcho services, is not only more innovative and robust but also eco-friendly, powered entirely by green energy.

The upgrade led to a 50% reduction in average round-trip latency for equities and a 66% reduction for ETFs, leading to swifter, more predictable order confirmations. The London Stock Exchange’s role as a price-former in UK Equities has also been enhanced, with a 9% increase in FTSE 100 EBBO settings and a 5% increase in the FTSE 100 EBBO Size Contribution.

SIX Integrates with FlexTrade’s Spark EMS to Provide Real-Time Global Market Data

SIX, the worldwide financial data provider, and FlexTrade Systems, the multi-asset execution and order management systems vendor, have integrated real-time global market pricing and reference data from SIX into the Spark cloud-based Execution Management System (EMS). This collaboration enables traders utilising Spark EMS to stream real-time global market data across multiple platforms, including desktop, browser, and API.

The new service using the SIX API, in conjunction with FlexTrade’s cloud-based EMS, delivers an off-the-shelf trading solution that aims to expedite time-to-market for new fund launches. The newly integrated service is now ready for client deployment.

VECTALIS Acquires BrokerHub, Bolstering Its Equity Derivatives Front-to-Back Solution

OTC equity derivatives workflow vendor VECTALIS has announced its acquisition of BrokerHub, a fellow financial technology company. By unifying their forces after years of competition, the two firms aim to provide crucial services to market participants, encompassing price dissemination from interdealer brokers to investment banks, block trade reporting to multiple exchanges, and the generation and reconciliation of confirmation tickets and broker fees, respectively.

This amalgamation of services promises to provide a comprehensive platform covering the front-to-back office for inter-dealer brokers and investment banks running equity derivatives desks, aiming to offer improved and more efficient workflows for clients.

SwanCap Implements Canoe Intelligence to Manage Alternative Investment Documents and Data Processes

Munich-based SwanCap Partners, an independent investment boutique, is working with Canoe Intelligence, a provider of alternative investment solutions, to automate and manage its document collection and data management processes, specifically for its capital calls, distributions, and account statements.

SwanCap has implemented two Canoe solutions: Canoe Connect, to automatically collect alternative investment documents from portals and email inboxes using API connectivity and deliver the aggregated documents to Canoe Intelligence; and Canoe Intelligence, to categorise, extract, and validate relevant private market investment data, and deliver clean, actionable insights to clients’ downstream systems.

Gryphon Fund Group Selects Linedata Mfact

Gryphon Fund Group, a fund administration firm servicing registered and private investment companies, has selected Linedata Mfact to streamline fund accounting, NAV calculation and reporting processes onto a single global platform. Gryphon says Linedata Mfact has helped it to simplify a number of back-office operations and integrate the daily workflow with other reporting requirements allowing its team of accounting experts to focus on client technical matters rather than processing client data.