SmartStream Launches Smart Agents AI Solution for Banking Operations

SmartStream has announced the launch of Smart Agents, an agentic artificial intelligence (AI) solution purpose-built for financial institutions and regulated environments. Natively integrated with Smart Reconciliations, the system is designed to streamline bank operations and can be deployed immediately without requiring modifications to a client’s existing infrastructure. The technology has already been validated through successful pilot deployments with Tier 1 financial institutions.

The solution addresses a major industry inefficiency, as financial firms currently dedicate up to 70% of their operational effort to handling exception workflows across disconnected systems. Smart Agents automates these fragmented processes end-to-end, including managing internal and counterparty communications. By surfacing only the specific workflow steps that require human intervention, the system shifts the paradigm so that data is automatically brought to analysts rather than requiring manual investigation.

To ensure compliance with strict internal governance, Smart Agents features complete data privacy and provides step-by-step explainability for every action taken. It offers institutions operational flexibility by running in both assistive and autonomous modes, allowing firms to safely scale their AI adoption according to their specific workflow requirements.

ACA Group Appoints Trey Loughran as Chief Executive Officer

ACA Group has appointed Trey Loughran as chief executive officer and member of the board, as the governance, risk and compliance solutions provider prepares for its next phase with Genstar Capital as lead investor.

Loughran succeeds Patrick Olson, who became CEO in May 2023. Olson will move into the role of vice chairman, where he will continue to support institutional client relationships and represent ACA with clients and at industry forums.

The appointment gives ACA a CEO with more than 30 years’ experience across financial services, data and analytics, and technology-enabled services. Loughran most recently served as CEO of Purchasing Power, a private equity-backed financial services platform, where he led a business transformation and sale to PROG Holdings.

He previously spent more than 12 years at Equifax, holding senior leadership roles including president of its US Information Solutions and Personal Solutions business units and chief marketing officer. His remit there included large-scale profit-and-loss management, mergers and acquisitions, product development and enterprise go-to-market strategy.

Loughran began his career at Lazard, later practised law and worked with McKinsey & Company before moving into operating leadership roles. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ben Brigeman, chairman of the board of ACA Group, commented, “ACA has built an extraordinary position as a leading GRC provider to the financial services industry, serving more than 6,000 clients globally. The Board is confident that Trey’s combination of deep financial services expertise, commercial instinct, and people-first leadership will help ACA translate that market position into accelerated growth. We are excited about the opportunity ahead.”

Trey Loughran, Chief Executive Officer of ACA Group, said: “ACA sits at the intersection of forces I have focused on my entire career: the growing complexity of regulatory compliance, the shift toward outsourced and technology-enabled solutions, and the clear demand for a category-defining platform. ACA’s leading team, client relationships, and reputation are what make this opportunity so exciting. I look forward to driving the next phase of ACA’s growth alongside our talented team and to delivering even greater value to our clients.”

Sid Ramakrishnan, managing director of Genstar Capital, “ACA’s combination of advisory expertise, managed services, and technology-enabled solutions positions it to capture the significant growth opportunity in regulatory compliance and operational resilience. Trey’s operating experience, client orientation, and track record of building high-performing teams make him the right leader for ACA’s next chapter,” Ramakrishnan said.

Commenting on Olson’s continuing role Brigeman added, “We are pleased that Patrick will continue to support ACA’s client relationships and institutional presence in his new role as Vice Chairman. His knowledge of our client base and industry standing will be a valuable asset during this transition.”

The appointment comes as compliance teams face rising regulatory complexity, operational resilience demands and pressure to show stronger evidence around governance, controls and outsourced processes. For ACA, that creates a market in which advisory expertise, managed services and technology-enabled workflows are becoming more closely linked.

EquiLend and Delta Capita Partner on Spire Implementation

EquiLend has entered a strategic partnership with Delta Capita to expand implementation support for EquiLend Spire, its securities finance platform.

The arrangement gives EquiLend additional delivery capacity as adoption of Spire grows across the securities finance market. Delta Capita will act as an implementation partner for new client onboarding and platform upgrades, working within EquiLend’s existing scoping, delivery and governance model.

The partnership combines EquiLend’s product and platform expertise with Delta Capita’s experience in securities finance, systems implementation and change management. The firms said Spire engagements will be delivered through a single, jointly governed model intended to give clients a clearer engagement structure and faster onboarding from the start of a project.

For Delta Capita, the role is centred on implementation discipline and securities finance delivery support. Sarah Carver, Global Head of Consulting at Delta Capita, said the firm would bring “the analysis discipline, delivery rigor, and securities finance domain knowledge to drive successful Spire projects.”

EquiLend framed the partnership as part of its work to support client experience as the platform evolves. Laurence Marshall, Managing Director of EquiLend, said Spire is “critical infrastructure for securities lending operations” and that the partnership expands “the implementation resources available to Spire clients,” supporting “smooth onboarding and upgrades” while helping clients keep their Spire environments current.

Broadridge Enhances NYFIX Platform with Overnight US Equity Trading via CAPIS and Blue Ocean

Global fintech provider Broadridge Financial Solutions has announced an upgrade to its NYFIX platform, allowing clients to trade overnight U.S. equities. This capability is delivered through a new integration with institutional brokerage firm CAPIS and access to the Blue Ocean Alternative Trading System (ATS).

The collaboration provides broker-dealers and institutional investors with extended-hours liquidity across more than 4,000 National Market System (NMS) securities. By bridging NYFIX clients with CAPIS’s trading desk and Blue Ocean’s overnight market infrastructure, Broadridge aims to help firms manage risk and execute strategies outside of traditional trading hours.

The integration supports portfolio rebalancing, exposure adjustments, and event-driven trading. It also allows market participants to respond to corporate earnings releases, macroeconomic news, and international market movements in real time, rather than waiting for the U.S. market opening.

Five Rings Joins BMLL Client Product Advisory Board

Financial data and analytics provider BMLL has welcomed proprietary trading firm Five Rings to its Client Product Advisory Board (CPAB). The New York-based firm will contribute its technological and market structure expertise to help shape BMLL’s future product roadmap, supporting the board’s mission to elevate historical market data standards across the industry.

Five Rings utilizes the BMLL Data Lab, a scalable Python research sandbox providing access to Level 3 order book data, alongside the BMLL Data Feed for flexible delivery. The trading firm relies on this high-fidelity data to explore market opportunities and enhance its quantitative research workflows across various asset classes. This includes utilizing BMLL’s Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA) options data, which has been available since November 2024 and features over seven years of historical, nanosecond unconflated data.

Launched in February 2025, the CPAB serves as a collaborative forum aligning sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, banks, liquidity providers, and proprietary trading firms. Member firms work together to define best-in-class data symbology, normalization protocols, and delivery methods for the wider market. BMLL’s global historical data coverage currently spans more than 100 trading venues across equities, ETFs, futures, and US equity options, including 100% of the MSCI World Index.

DTCC and Stellar Development Foundation Partner to Tokenize Real-World Assets

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) have announced a partnership to enable the tokenization of assets custodied by The Depository Trust Company (DTC) on the Stellar network. This collaboration follows an SEC No-Action Letter received in December 2025, which authorized DTC to implement a new service for digital asset tokenization. The initiative aims to provide market participants with faster settlement, greater asset mobility, and reduced costs while maintaining identical investor protections and safeguards as traditionally held securities.

The integration is projected to launch in the first half of 2027, supporting the rapid conversion of traditional assets alongside full lifecycle management, corporate actions, and reporting. In the interim, both organizations will collaborate to evaluate tokenization use cases for highly liquid asset classes. This will include constituents of the Russell 1000, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking major indices, and U.S. Treasury bills, bonds, and notes, ensuring full compliance with DTC’s regulatory obligations.

Duco’s Post-Trade Agents Seen Substantially Reducing Reconciliation Times

Duco has launched an agentic operations platform for post-trade workflows.
The platform relies on an engine that processes 20 billion transactions monthly for more than 200 clients, the financial services data automation provider said.

Ten firms are using the autonomous agents in production, benefiting from a decrease in the time required to build a new reconciliation process from two days to four hours.

Chief executive officer and co-founder Christian Nentwich said clients are reporting that agents will run a meaningful share of post-trade operations within three years.

National Bank of Greece in Cyprus Goes Live with Smartstream AI Reconciliation Solution

Smartstream, the data solutions provider for global financial institutions, has announced that the National Bank of Greece (NBG) in Cyprus has successfully deployed its AI-enabled reconciliation solution, Air. The bank has implemented Air’s Cash module to consolidate four separate legacy reconciliation systems used for Instant, Cash, SEPA, and Nostro transactions into a single platform.

Prior to this deployment, NBG in Cyprus managed a fragmented operational landscape. Although transaction volumes were manageable, the bank required significant daily manual effort to process items individually and navigate multiple data formats. The transition to the unified platform aims to eliminate these complexities and reduce manual processing requirements.

NBG in Cyprus selected Smartstream’s Air following a market review, opting for its self-service model and AI automation to better utilise internal resources. The platform’s ability to create reconciliation groups allows multiple items to be matched simultaneously rather than individually, delivering measurable efficiency gains from day one.

Avelacom Launches Low-Latency Connectivity Route Between Bangkok and Tokyo

Avelacom, the ultra-low latency connectivity and infrastructure provider, has launched a direct network route between Bangkok and Tokyo. By optimizing the terrestrial fibre segment, the company has established a more direct path between Thailand and Japan, achieving a round-trip delay (RTD) of less than 65 milliseconds.

The new route specifically supports low-latency connectivity between the Thailand Futures Exchange and CME derivatives markets, with a focus on gold and foreign exchange (FX) market data and trading. It caters to proprietary trading firms, institutional trading desks, and regional banks operating across global equity, FX, commodity, and derivatives markets, where deterministic network performance directly influences execution efficiency.

This infrastructure expansion addresses the growing demand for reliable, high-performance connectivity as Bangkok solidifies its position as a regional financial and trading hub. The route further integrates into Avelacom’s broader global network, which links major traditional and digital asset trading venues across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Pacer Advisors Implements Bloomberg’s Order and Execution Management Solutions

Pacer Advisors has successfully implemented Bloomberg’s multi-asset order and execution management solutions (OEMSs) to automate its investment workflow. The integration includes Bloomberg Asset and Investment Manager (AIM) alongside EMSX, its multi-asset execution management system. This setup streamlines Pacer’s position management, trade execution, and compliance processes.

As part of the deployment, Bloomberg introduced the Rule Builder (RBLD) Optimizer to assist Pacer’s traders and portfolio managers during ETF rebalances. Integrated with AIM’s portfolio management functionality, the automated trading tool allows users to compare portfolios against benchmarks and generate automated orders. This replaces a traditional, manual “Broker Wheel” approach by evaluating entire order baskets simultaneously across multiple constraints, such as broker commissions, share distribution, and liquidity footprints.

The fully integrated solution enables complex baskets to be allocated and released to brokers in coordinated, single-click batches. By transitioning from hours of manual calculations to automated, dollar-neutral execution, the system reduces cash drag and overnight risk. Ultimately, the implementation lowers operational complexity and provides scalable execution for high-volume ETF portfolios.