EU Approves Implementation of Taxonomy Delegated Act

The European Union’s Taxonomy climate Delegated Act will come into force next month, a move that’s considered a milestone in the bloc’s aim to bring sustainability accounting to its companies. The member states of the EU’s Commission approved the implementation of the regulation. The EU Taxonomy is seen as key to enabling investors to accurately compare the ESG disclosures of corporates and provides a sustainability benchmark and common language for markets.

FactSet Joins AWS Data Exchange

FactSet has joined the AWS Data Exchange and will deploy over 30 proprietary datasets available within the FactSet ecosystem on the exchange, allowing clients to use its content for faster, more efficient decision making. The data will be made available on AWS Data Exchange using Amazon Redshift Data Sharing, which allows clients to securely and easily share live data across Amazon Redshift clusters. FactSet will also begin listing APIs that allow users to benefit from its portfolio analytics engine without being existing FactSet clients. Additional APIs to AWS Data Exchange will provide flexible access to all FactSet content and functionality.

JUMP Adds SIX ESG and Sanctions Data to Investment Management Platform

SIX and JUMP Technology, provider of a modular investment management platform, have extended a 10-year partnership in order to provide users of the JUMP platform with greater access to SIX data. JUMP offers advanced connectors to the SIX data feed, allowing users to automatically plug in and collect a wide variety of financial data provided by SIX, including securities characteristics, daily prices, intra-day prices, issuer master files, corporate actions, and look-through data. The 10-year anniversary extends coverage of the connector to include SIX ESG data and data related to sanctioned securities monitoring.

Synechron Partners Differential Privacy Solutions Provider LeapYear to Help Clients Monetise Data

Digital transformation consultancy Synechron has partnered LeapYear Technologies to accelerate the use of ‘differential privacy’ solutions that Synechron can provide to its banking, asset management, insurance, and stock exchange clients. LeapYear unlocks commercial value from large-scale data in a mathematically proven, scalable, rigorous, and anonymised way.

The companies have developed a proof of concept and can now help financial services firms get value from their data with ironclad protection of the source. Sandeep Kumar, managing director, innovations, at Synechron, says: “Firms can monetise the vast amounts of data they collect. The data can be collectively leveraged to derive analytics and valuable insights, while keeping individuals, clients and institutions private.”

Ishaan Nerurkar, CEO at LeapYear Technologies, adds: “Our solutions allow enterprises to break down silos, form data partnerships, and maximise the commercial impact of their franchise data.”

FTX US Selects Eventus for Crypto Surveillance

US-regulated cryptocurrency exchange FTX US has selected Eventus Systems to conduct trade surveillance and risk monitoring on its cryptocurrency futures and options exchange and clearinghouse. FTX US Derivatives plans to leverage the alert coverage, trade practice investigation tools, and data tagging provided by Eventus’ Validus platform to monitor its listed derivatives market. In addition, FTX US Derivatives and FTX US plan to implement cross-market surveillance across multiple asset classes and order books, and utilise Validus’ machine learning-based noise-reduction tooling to enable compliance staff to focus on key information.

Bloomberg and Acadia Introduce Pre-Trade SIMM Calculations

Bloomberg and Acadia, specialists in risk management, have integrated Bloomberg’s Multi Asset Risk System (MARS) with Acadia’s IMEM (Initial Margin Exposure Manager) module. The integration will provide Standard Initial Margin Model (SIMM) pre-trade analytics, and will support Phase 6 of the Uncleared Margin Rule (UMR) obligations, part of the longstanding initial margin rule framework created by the Basel Committee and IOSCO. The addition of the pre-trade SIMM analytics expands Bloomberg’s existing post-trade integration with Acadia, which enables in-scope market participants to calculate initial margin for uncleared derivatives, and provides access to calculation of risk sensitivities through both Bloomberg and Acadia.

EY Survey Shows Growing Demand for Consistent ESG Reporting Standards

A survey by professional services giant EY Assurance has found that three quarters of financial leaders want to see more consistent ESG reporting standards and that they must be mandatory. A similar proportion of the 1,000 executives interviewed said that ESG was a “significant part of their role” – up from two-thirds in the poll last year. Nevertheless around a third of respondents said that there was a lack of real-time data and information with long-term value. And almost a quarter said there was a “disconnect” between reporting ESG and mainstream financial information. “There is no doubt that the drive towards improved sustainability reporting is gaining momentum… but there is a steep mountain to climb,” said Marie-Laure Delarue, EY Global Vice Chair.

Moody’s Expands ESG Credit Ratings to More Industries

Moody’s Investors Service has widened its coverage of ESG credit risk scores to industries including oil and gas, utilities, semiconductors and financial services. The rating company offers issuer profile scores for 1,700 borrowers including companies, nations and regional entities, measuring their exposure to ESG-related risks. It also provides credit impact scores, which give an indication of the impact those ESG measures have on an issuer’s credit rating. Each gauge is expressed on a five-point scale.

Leveraged Finance Investors Call for More Loans ESG Data

European investors in leveraged finance instruments have called for more sustainability data on the securities. The European Leveraged Finance Association (ELFA) has urged vendors to do more to increase transparency into the asset class. The organisation said vendors covered no more than 10 per cent of leveraged loans. That compares with up to 79 per cent coverage of investment grade borrowers.

NeoXam Partners Data Management Consultancy Soranus

NeoXam continues to extend its partner portfolio with the addition of a strategic agreement with Soranus, a data management consultancy. The agreement is designed to support client implementation projects of the company’s DataHub across Switzerland and Liechtenstein.