Shield FC Wins Deloitte RegTech Challenge

Shield Financial Compliance (Shield FC) has been named by Deloitte as one of the most innovative start-ups using artificial intelligence (AI) to solve regulatory challenges in the financial sector.

Shield FC’s cross-regulation compliance platform provides a 360 view of all electronics communications and trades, making compliance more efficient and ROI driven.

“As Deloitte, we are proud to create for Shield FC the opportunity to be a part of our innovation ecosystem that aims to solve real business problems and meet our clients’ needs,” said the Deloitte RegTech Challenge team.

FlexNOW Migrates to AWS Cloud

FlexTrade Systems has made its FlexNOW execution management system available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in a move to reduce latency for global clients. The Amazon platform will raise FlexNOW’s status as an innovative trading platform by decreasing onboarding time for clients and brokers while allowing their product teams to easily test new ideas, such as STP APIs, mobile access and analytics.

Rhyd Lewis, FlexNOW product manager, says: “With FlexNOW deployed on AWS, our clients benefit from increased flexibility, reduced lead-time for new features, and industry leading security and reliability.”

Wedbush Futures Switches to Trillium Surveyor for Trade Surveillance

Los Angeles-based Wedbush Futures, one of the largest non-bank Futures Commission Merchants (FCM) in the US, is switching from legacy products to Trillium’s Surveyor platform for trade surveillance. The Surveyor software qualifies alerts using full depth-of-book market data. It also offers next-generation detection, visualisation and workflow functionality to keep up with today’s demands for surveillance.

Traiana Offers Direct Connectivity to Hong Kong Clearing House OTC Clear

Traiana, a provider of trade life-cycle and risk management solutions, is offering direct central clearing connectivity to the Hong Kong Exchanges (HKEXs) and Clearing’s OTC Clearing Hong Kong, OTC Clear. Market participants can access HKEXs OTC Clear service to clear USD/CNH and USD/HKD FX forward and swaps via Traiana’s CCP Connect clearing hub, which provides affirmation, matching and trade processing. Member banks can clear deliverable FX trades using Traiana connectivity and workflow options, while existing Traiana clients and electronic trading venues can enable the HKEX clearing workflow as an add-on to Traiana FX post-trade processing services.

FTSE Russell and Refinitiv Extend Partnership Providing Fixed Income Data, Analytics and Indexes

FTSE Russell is set to broaden the scope of Refinitiv datasets used in its fixed income indexes and analytic tools. The decision was made after a supplier review and will combine Refinitiv’s expertise in fixed income pricing and terms and conditions, with FTSE Russell’s capabilities in multi-asset indexes and analytics.

The extended relationship is expected to deliver benefits to global investors by enhancing FTSE Russell’s ability to offer world-class multi-asset investment tools based on consistent, high quality and independent datasets produced by Refinitiv.

YipitData Offers ReadyPipe Web-Scraping Services to Institutional Investors

YipitData, a provider of web data for institutional investors, has made its internal web-scraping platform, ReadyPipe, available to external customers. The platform enables analysts to collect web data and write their own web-scraping logic, and has potential to give investors informational advantage.

The ReadyPipe service allows firms to either log onto the ReadyPipe platform and write logic that will collect web data, or choose ReadyPipe’s full-service offering, which uses a YipitData team to collect data on behalf of a firm.

BIG Offers Blockchain Course for Crypto Investigations

BIG Blockchain Intelligence Group (BIG), a Vancouver-based developer and provider of blockchain and cryptocurrency search, risk-scoring and data analytics tools and investigation services, claims to have launched the “world’s first” investigator-developed, eight-hour online certification course for cryptocurrency investigations. Originally created for US law enforcement officials, the course has been adapted for use by finance and compliance professionals and consists of five fee-based modules including a detailed forensic review of cryptocurrency transactions and covering a variety of crypto crimes. Completion earns the credential of “Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator” from BIG.

New Hotscan360 Solution From Canada’s CGI

Anti-financial crime solutions provider CGI has launched CGI HotScan360, an enhanced version of its existing HotScan solution. CGI HotScan360 provides integrated, intelligent and real time anti-money laundering, customer due diligence and fraud detection capabilities. The platform uses a real-time risk engine to scan and score thousands of transactions per second utilising machine learning, advanced analytics and automation. “CGI HotScan360 is a modular solution that allows banks to integrate certain modules with other systems or omit them, as necessary,” says CGI. “The solution also complies with the latest and upcoming regulations such as PSD2, GDPR and SEPA instant payment requirements.”

FIX Trading Community Calls for Industry Participants to Join New Working Groups

FIX is inviting industry participants to join a number of new working groups that will operate under the FIX Trading Community umbrella.

The working groups include a repo working group covering how to automate the lifecycle of repos using FIX and an RMB products group to propose enhancements to the FIX Protocol for RMB product related workflows. A securities lending group will develop messages to support automated processing of securities lending and an SFTR group will help firms meet the challenges of Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR), including reporting obligations that are expected to come into play in late 2019 or early 2020.

If you would like to join any of these working groups contact the FIX Program Office – fix@fixtrading.org.

Dash Financial Technologies Acquires eRoom Securities

Capital markets technology and execution provider Dash Financial Technologies has signed an agreement to acquire Chicago-based eRoom Securities.

The eRoom platform, which provides multi-asset trading technology, agency execution, risk management, reporting and clearing services to professional traders, institutions and hedge funds, will be rebranded as Dash Prime.

As the Dash Prime project gets underway, eRoom leadership will continue to be headed by Collin Carrico and Ben Schwartz.

“Joining forces with Dash puts us at the leading edge of technology and enables us to broaden our prime services suite to create more opportunities for our current and future clients,” says Carrico.

The transaction is expected to close in Q1 2019, contingent upon standard closing conditions including regulatory approvals.