Pension Fund TCFD Alignment Hampered by Data, Report Says

The shortage and inconsistency of sustainability data is preventing pension funds from formulating climate-forward investment strategies, according to a report by Pensions for Purpose. The data challenges mean few funds are aligning with the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework to shape their approach to ESG and their use of some analytics remains limited, the report said.

Eventus Launches Anti-Money Laundering Solution, Validus AML

Trade surveillance and market risk solutions vendor Eventus has launched Validus AML, a new end-to-end anti-money laundering (AML) platform aimed at helping firms in both the traditional finance and digital asset space combat financial crime. The cloud-based solution combines a signals-based approach to behaviour detection with rules-based logic and advanced data analytics.

Validus AML will offer a full spectrum of detection, workflow and case management tools for current and new clients, enabling them to reduce financial and regulatory risk, identify illicit financial behaviours and further streamline their use of external vendors on critical compliance functions.

With Intelligence Introduces New Offering for Allocators

With Intelligence, the investment intelligence data provider, is expanding its offering with a new service designed exclusively for allocators, Allocate With. By blending ‘pre-event’ reporting on the latest market moves with detailed insights, it aims to provide allocators with highly intuitive information to enhance their allocation experience.

Allocate With users will receive access to focused content, including allocator investment actions, asset allocation calls, and key people moves. The service will also provide additional information around alternative asset management, including product development and launches, high-level fund summaries, standout positive or negative performances, curated indices and new strategies.

Iress Partners with Centroid, Providing Real-Time Market Data

Iress, the financial software, services and technology company, is partnering with Centroid Solutions, specialists in risk management, bridging and execution engines, to bring real-time pricing data and trading APIs to Centroid’s client base. The collaboration will enable Centroid’s clients to gain real-time market data from global markets via Iress.

Powered by Iress’s ConsolidatedFEED API, Centroid can now offer its clients an enhanced, end-to-end solution for pricing and trading exchange traded products. Iress’s API data and trading solutions have been fully integrated into Centroid Bridge, a Liquidity Management and Order Execution Engine.

Ataccama Deepens Integration of ONE Unified Data Management Platform with Snowflake

Ataccama, a unified data management platform provider, has released deeper integration of its Ataccama ONE platform with Snowflake providing data observability functionality and pushdown processing to joint customers. Data is processed directly on Snowflake’s single, integrated Data Cloud platform, delivering faster, lower cost and more secure results.

“With the release of the latest version of the Ataccama ONE platform, we are bringing all Ataccama data quality functionalities, including rule evaluation, data quality monitoring, and profiling to Snowflake customers. We can also improve the user experience with pushdown functionality that processes data directly on Snowflake, saving precious time,” says Martin Zahumensky, chief product technology officer at Ataccama.

ION Derivatives Platform Hit by Cyber Attack

ION Cleared Derivatives, a division of ION Markets, was hit by a cyber attack earlier this week, which has impacted its ability to run overnight processing of derivatives trades on its platform. LockBit, the Russian-linked ransomware group, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

According to reports, 42 of ION’s customers have been affected by the attack, with several forced to process trades manually. The FIA (Futures Industry Association) is working with affected members to assess the impact of the attack, which is ongoing.

ATB Financial Adopts smartTrade as end-to-End FX Platform

Canadian financial institution ATB Financial has adopted smartTrade as its client-facing FX platform. The firm sought a digital platform with sophisticated pre-trade, trade, post-trade and payments workflows, packaged in an easy-to-use format with integrated sales tools.

ATB cited smartTrade’s connectivity to liquidity providers, its support capabilities and the company’s integration experience as reasons for selecting it as an end-to-end solution.

Swiss Finance Corporation Selects Integral for eFX Trading and Workflow

Integral, the currency technology provider, has been selected by Swiss Finance Corporation (SFC), whi will use Integral’s cloud-based SaaS technology to modernize its offering and bring eFX trading to its customers.

Integral’s end-to-end workflow and eFX trading technology, which includes liquidity aggregation, price generation, distribution, risk management and analytics, was rolled out in a matter of weeks, according to the company.

Pico Upgrades Corvil VoIP Analytics

Pico, the technology services, software, data and analytics vendor, has announced a major upgrade to Corvil VoIP Analytics, its solution for providing real-time visibility of VoIP performance.

The upgrade provides the ability to capture and decode lossless granularly timestamped data at 100GB and apply it to VoIP applications. Future enhancements announced for release in 2023 include waveform analysis using machine intelligence to analyse voice quality on thousands of simultaneous calls. The product will also be available for cloud deployment on AWS in Q1 2023.

Horizon Launches Horizon Extend Development Platform

Electronic trading solutions and algorithmic technology provider Horizon Software has announced the release of Horizon Extend, a development framework for the Horizon platform.

Clients will be able to utilise Horizon Extend to create new pricing modules and hedgers within the system, to automate workflow, to add advanced routing rules for DMA flow, and to develop their own trading risk and control rules, among other things.