FIX Trading Community Releases Standardised Outage Communication Practices

The FIX Trading Community has introduced a standard methodology, the Outage Communication Recommended Practices, to automate the electronic communication of market outages. Previously, outage notifications were inconsistent and largely manual, which often worsened the impact of technical disruptions. This new framework allows exchanges and market participants to issue timely, consistent updates and resolutions.

The initiative responds directly to regulatory guidance from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), alongside industry bodies such as AFME, EFAMA, and FIA EPTA, who have all called for harmonised outage protocols. The practices build upon existing frameworks for European consolidated tapes while offering greater granularity.

Designed to be asset-class agnostic, the framework covers trading, market data, and other technical disruptions across all scopes, from individual instruments to entire markets. It applies broadly to venues, brokers, asset managers, and data providers, ensuring a unified approach to managing system failures.

BLOX Markets Partners with Imandra to Deploy AI Infrastructure for Openpool

BLOX Markets has formed a strategic partnership with neurosymbolic AI firm Imandra to integrate its technology into Openpool, an upcoming retail-focused US equities trading venue. The platform will use Imandra Connectivity and CodeLogician as foundational components for its software assurance, certification, and connectivity infrastructure.

The deployment replaces traditional static documentation and manual testing with Imandra’s machine-readable models. Using the Imandra Protocol Language, Openpool will provide connecting firms with a living specification that continuously reflects production behaviour. This allows users to validate their implementations through automated simulators, increasing transparency and efficiency during the onboarding process.

Furthermore, BLOX Markets will utilise CodeLogician, an automated reasoning engine, to formally verify software behaviour. By creating mathematical models of the system, this technology identifies edge cases and proves critical properties prior to deployment, ensuring correctness and resilience across the market infrastructure.

Novig Deploys Eventus Validus Platform for Trade Surveillance Ahead of Nationwide Expansion

Novig, the American sports prediction market, has deployed the Eventus Validus platform to provide trade surveillance for its exchange. This partnership follows Novig’s recent approval by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a Designated Contract Market (DCM). This regulatory designation allows the company to operate as a federally regulated prediction market and launch a nationwide expansion this summer.

Novig selected the Validus platform for its ability to customise surveillance scenarios, such as wash trading and spoofing, to suit its specific market mechanics. The system offers cross-account and cross-market analysis to detect coordinated manipulation, alongside real-time and post-trade monitoring for clean forensic auditability.

Additionally, the platform provides straightforward integration with Novig’s internal systems and includes built-in case management workflows to streamline investigations. Eventus was chosen to support Novig’s long-term growth, offering the necessary scalability to handle increasing trade volumes and an expanding regulatory surface area.

SoftSolutions Integrates AI Capabilities Into nexRates Fixed-Income Trading Platform

SoftSolutions has integrated production-ready artificial intelligence into its nexRates fixed-income trading platform. The new tool allows traders to use plain language to automatically generate context-dependent Request for Quote (RFQ) layouts, workflow rules, and custom interfaces, eliminating the need for developer or vendor intervention.

The AI operates strictly within a predefined catalogue of platform fields and actions. Every configuration is schema-validated, previewed, and requires final confirmation from the trader. Crucially, the AI functions solely for decision support and desk configuration; it does not price, quote, or execute trades. All risk limits, compliance gates, and supervisor approvals apply throughout, preserving MiFID II and RTS 6 alignment.

Furthermore, the system analyses counterparty behaviour to propose concrete strategy adjustments based on client history and tiering. By bringing historical patterns into a single view, the AI facilitates faster calls while ensuring the trader retains complete command over every decision.

GoldenSource Scout AI Platform Seeks to Bring Trust to Data

GoldenSource has launched an artificial intelligence platform called GoldenSource Scout, which is designed to help financial services firms establish trusted data context for AI models.

The release follows findings from the InvestOps 2026 research report, which indicated that 98 per cent of firms are concerned that poor data could lead to incorrect artificial intelligence insights.

“The test for AI is not whether it can generate answers, but whether those answers can stand up to operational scrutiny, governance expectations and board-level accountability,” said GoldenSource chief executive James Corrigan. “That is where trusted data context becomes essential.”

The platform allows clients to query and interpret data across multiple domains through a chat interface or an agent-building tool deployed on Amazon Bedrock.

It expands upon the company’s previous data management services, which have focused on standardising and operationalising complex market data for four decades.

MSCI Buys First Street to Bolster Climate Risk Data Offering

MSCI has acquired physics-based climate risk data and analytics provider First Street as it seeks to enhance its climate risk capabilities.

The US$120 million transaction coms as as financial institutions demand physical climate risk data embedded into workflows to inform decision-making during accelerating global climate risks, MSCI said.

“The integration of First Street data into MSCI’s existing geospatial capabilities will enable clients to be better informed about their changing risk exposures and translate that directly into financial decision-making,” Richard Mattison, head of sustainability and climate at MSCI, said,

First Street provides multi-hazard models that incorporate climate signals to assess physical risk exposure, asset damage and business interruption.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter and builds upon MSCI’s previous developments in geospatial intelligence, climate scenario analysis and transition finance.

Chainlink’s DLT-Based Project Pangea Tackles T+0 FX Settlement

Oracle provider Chainlink’s Project Pangea has assembled 50+ banks across 16 countries to bring DLT-powered real-time atomic settlement to the $9.6 trillion per day foreign exchange market.

The project’s bank partners include members of three European and Korean consortia, while the technology base comprises Chainlink’s CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol), Swift’s ISO 20022 messaging service and DLT-based settlement technology from FairSquareLab, a Korean digital asset infrastructure developer.

FairSquareLab’s onchain settlement technology uses stablecoin transfers and smart contracts running on Ethereum, Polygon, and a proprietary L1 network. Banks access Pangea via existing Swift connections while Chainlink supports digital asset transfers and FX market data.

State Street Launches GENIUS Act Stablecoin Fund

State Street Investment Management has launched the State Street Stablecoin Reserves Money Market Fund, a regulated money market fund designed to support stablecoin issuers. The fund, which complies with the recently introduced GENIUS Act, offers a regulated reserve option for stablecoin issuers. State Street Bank and Anchorage Digital are the first investors in the fund.

Already the largest real-world application of DLT, USD-denominated stablecoins account for trillions of dollars in annual transactions. Since they are typically backed by short-term U.S. Treasury debt, the U.S. government views them as strategic to the country’s economy and as a result, issuers are required to maintain secure, liquid, and regulated funding pools.

Since money market funds currently represent the single largest tokenised asset category, the addition of funds designed to back stablecoins represents increased convergence of the traditional and digital asset securities spaces.

EIB Issues Commercial Paper on Clearstream’s D7 DLT; Looks to Hybrid Platform

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has issued the first DLT-native, Euro-denominated commercial paper on Clearstream’s D7 DLT platform. The EUR 77.5 million issuance was made in compliance with Europe’s Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) and involved Citi as sole dealer and issuing/paying agent, as well as BIL, DekaBank, DZ BANK, Eurex Clearing, Union Investment and Volksbank Mittlerer Schwarzwald as primary investors.

Subsequently, DekaBank and Eurex Clearing were able to demonstrate collateral mobility for the DLT-based tokenised securities through Clearstream’s triparty collateral management solution and the European Collateral Management System to support financing with the Bundesbank.

Launched in 2025 following substantial trials with the European Central Bank, D7 DLT is a private, permissioned distributed ledger platform designed by Clearstream in collaboration with Google Cloud.

Following the EIB issuance, Clearstream has announced plans to create a hybrid infrastructure to support both traditional and digital securities. Market participants will be able to hold and combine traditional securities, DLT-based tokenised securities and cash in a single portfolio.

The hybrid offering will launch in stages during 2026 and 2027. Subject to regulatory approval, it will cover the entire securities lifecycle, from issuance, distribution, settlement and custody, through to asset servicing, liquidity and financing.

Shield Extends Agentic Suite Into Governed Alert Closure

Shield has added two AI agents to AmplifAI, its agentic suite for digital communications surveillance and investigations, extending the platform’s focus from detection and investigation into alert resolution and language coverage.

The new Alert Closure Agent is designed to assess flagged communications using message content, risk language and conversation context, and to close alerts where the surrounding context indicates that no compliance risk is present. The company says customer evaluations of the agent resulted in a 77.3% reduction in false positives.

The launch addresses one of the most persistent operating problems in communications surveillance: large volumes of low-risk alerts that absorb reviewer capacity before cases can be escalated for more meaningful investigation. The company cites industry estimates that firms process roughly one million Level 1 alerts each year, with fewer than 0.02% progressing beyond initial review and 93% of firms identifying false positives as a significant operational challenge. The agent is positioned as a governed workflow tool rather than a standalone decision-maker, with closure reasoning recorded in the alert detail, closed alerts capable of being reopened, and quality assurance workflow steps configurable by the firm.

The operational significance is the move from AI-assisted triage to controlled case disposition. Surveillance providers have increasingly used artificial intelligence to classify communications, prioritise alerts or surface contextual information, while regulators have observed firms exploring AI to filter false alerts. This latest release pushes further into the workflow by allowing contextually clear false positives to be closed under defined oversight controls.

That distinction matters for regulated firms. The practical challenge is not simply whether AI can reduce alert noise, but whether it can do so in a way that leaves a defensible evidence trail for compliance, audit and supervisory review. The company’s emphasis on recorded reasoning, reopenable alerts and configurable quality assurance is intended to support that governance requirement.

The second addition, the Language Expansion Agent, is aimed at multilingual surveillance gaps. Shield says the agent can identify risk across unmonitored or rare languages, bringing communications inside the compliance perimeter regardless of the languages a firm has selected for active monitoring.

Together, the two agents broaden AmplifAI across detection, investigation and governed resolution. The suite already includes a Noise Reduction Agent and Coverage Expansion Agent for detection, a Risk Reasoning Agent for triage and analysis, and Shiela, an agentic assistant for natural-language queries and investigation.

Shiran Weitzman, chief executive officer of Shield, framed the launch as part of a shift from task-specific AI toward “a coordinated system of specialized agents” across the surveillance lifecycle. He said the new agents are intended to support autonomy “where needed” while helping firms “keep human judgment at the centre.”

Tamar Sharir, chief product officer of Shield, linked the release to the long-running trade-off between scale, coverage and efficiency in compliance operations. She said the new agents are designed to give compliance programmes “coverage and capacity” across channels, languages and alerts.

The Alert Closure Agent and Language Expansion Agent are available as part of the AmplifAI suite. The company says the Alert Closure Agent is already in deployment with a Tier 1 financial institution.