Swift to Connect KYC Registry with Regional Utilities

Swift, a global provider of secure financial messaging services, is reportedly in talks with regional KYC utilities regarding the potential connection of their solutions with its KYC Registry, an online portal set up in 2014 to manager and share KYC due diligence and information.

Although the registry has until now been used only by financial institutions with correspondent banking services, the firm is planning to open the service up to corporate clients by the end of 2019.

Volkswagen Bank Chooses BearingPoint for Regulatory Reporting

Germany’s Volkswagen Bank has confirmed a switch from an in-house regulatory reporting solution to the standard Abacus360 Banking Regulatory software package from BearingPoint. BearingPoint will provide the software and also take over the tasks and processes of the technical operation, in addition to providing infrastructure and support services within the scope of managed services. Volkswagen will also outsource the supply chain from its own data warehouse to BearingPoint.

ESMA Makes New Bond Liquidity Data Available

From the 1st August the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has made available new data for bonds subject to the pre- and post-trade requirements of MiFID II and MiFIR through its data register.

MiFID II, which came into force in January 2018, introduced pre- and post-trade transparency requirements for equity and non-equity instruments, including for bonds. Post-trade, MiFID II requires real-time publication of the price and quantity of trades in liquid bonds. It is possible to defer the publication of post-trade reports if the instrument does not have a liquid market, or if the transaction size is above large-in-scale thresholds (LIS), or above a size specific to the instrument (SSTI). In order to assist market participants to know whether a bond should be considered as liquid or not, ESMA now publishes these quarterly liquidity assessments for bonds.

For the current period, there are 594 liquid bonds subject to MiFID II transparency requirements.

SIX Releases Marijuana Related Data Service

SIX has introduced a service covering over 30,000 securities connected with Marijuana Related Businesses (MRBs). The service reflects the changing legal landscape around marijuana. In the US, marijuana has been legalised in some states, but is criminal at federal level. As a result, in some states MRBs can raise money via capital markets, enabling investors to access MRB linked securities. Some countries in Europe consider investing in MRBs as money laundering. MRB Securities service, built on the same model as the SIX Sanctioned Securities Monitoring Service, identifies and lists securities that are directly or indirectly issued by listed MRB entities.

Law Society Endorses Accuity AML Solutions

Accuity, a global provider of financial crime screening, payments and know your customer (KYC) solutions, has been endorsed by theLaw Society of England and Walesfor the provision of anti-money laundering (AML) solutions for the legal sector.Accuity was awarded the three-year endorsement and partnership contract for a fourth consecutive term, having worked with the Law Society to raise the standard of financial crime compliance across the legal sector since 2009. The Law Society is the professional body for 9,452 law firms and 140,000 practising solicitors in England and Wales.

Axioma Launches New Linked Models in Risk Model Machine

Enterprise risk management and regulatory reporting specialist Axioma has launched Linked Models, a new feature of its Risk Model Machine solution, offering the investment industry astreamlined view of risk across regions or sectors, with the objective of creating consistency in the risk/return profile as viewed from the front and middle offices. The solution enables managers to create a custom risk model that captures exposures from all regions or sectors, avoiding inconsistencies or skewed reporting.

Moody’s Acquires RiskFirst

Moody’s Corporation has acquired RiskFirst, a provider of risk analytic solutions for the assetmanagement and pension fund communities. The acquisition positions Moody’s Analytics to extend its range of risk solutions to the institutional buy-side.

RiskFirst’s PFaroe platform provides a risk solution for US and UK defined benefit pension markets, covering over 3,000 plans and more than $1.4 trillion in assets. RiskFirst also offers solutions for the institutional investment market, including endowments, foundations and asset managers.

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. RiskFirst generated £16.5 million of revenue in 2018.

Trax to Begin SFTR Industry Testing

Trax, a subsidiary of MarketAxess, is expected to start testing a new platform in August with the ability to generate unique transaction identifiers (UTIs), required under the upcoming SFTR regulation coming into force in April 2020.

Acuris Partners with SILO Compliance for AML Data Drive

Acuris Risk Intelligence, a provider of data intelligence around anti-money laundering, anti-corruption and cyber security, has joined forces with due diligence management specialist SILIO Compliance System to enhance data capabilities. The partnership will give SILO Compliance users access to the Acuris Risk Intelligence dataset KYC6, including fraud and cybersecurity content, through an online portal that provides compliance teams with capabilities including search, ongoing monitoring, sanctions and Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) reports.

“The integration of Acuris into the SILO platform further serves our customer’s needs for more automation and streamlining of their compliance processes,” said Kimberly Smith, co-founder of SILO Compliance.

Synechron Data Science Launches New LIBOR Solution

London-based Synechron has launched a LIBOR accelerator using data science to address thechallenges of financial sector benchmarking. The accelerator for LIBOR Impact Analysis enables financial institutions to identify and quantify their LIBOR exposure at either a contract level or across all contracts within an institution. Thesolution leverages Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and three levels of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify and quantify LIBOR exposure at the contract level, or across all contracts within an institution.It then allows contracts to be revalued using alternative rates and valuation models for a significant reduction of manual LIBOR impact assessments.