A-Team Insight Brief
OpenGamma Raises $10 million in Growth Funding
OpenGamma, a derivatives analytics provider, has raised $10 million in funding led by early-stage fintech and B2B software venture capital firm Dawn. The funding round included participation from existing investors CME Ventures and ex-SunGard CEO and fintech angel investor, Cristóbal Conde. OpenGamma’s analytics solutions are designed to help global banks, hedge funds and asset managers reduce the cost of trading derivatives.
Redline Expands Support for Canadian Equities
Redline Trading Solutions, a provider of order execution systems, is upgrading and building on its support for Canadian equities. Upgrade features include low-latency feed handlers for the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), Canadian Securities Exchange, Omega Nasdaq CXC, Nasdaq CX2, and Aequitas. John Hanna, global head of sales and field engineering at Redline, says the company is eyeing APAC to potentially expand its offerings further. The company is also working to release a composite Mexican order book.
Vela Provides Colo Services for JPX Markets
Vela, a provider of market access technology for global multi-asset electronic trading, has made its Direct Market Access (DMA) platform available at the Japan Exchange Group (JPX) site in Tokyo. By colocating in cabinets with premier access to JPX markets, Vela can offer ultra-low latency order routing and market data to Osaka Exchange (OSE). A Tier 1 investment bank is among one of Vela’s first clients in this colocation space. With ASX already live on the platform, JPX is the next step in Vela’s global expansion with further points of presence planned in key APAC markets including SGX and HKEX.
Regional Banks Join KY3P Initiative Aimed at Standardising Vendor Due Diligence
A group of 12 regional banks has invested in KY3P, a company working with the financial industry to minimise the burden of responding to duplicative due diligence requests from financial institutions. The group adds to existing design partners Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and UBS. KY3P was initiated by IHS Markit in 2015 and offers a central, cloud-based platform for vendor onboarding, collection and verification of due diligence data and vendor risk monitoring covering a range of third parties, including vendors, affiliates, sub-advisors, distributors, clearinghouses and other service providers in the financial industry.
Willis Towers Watson Selects SimCorp Dimension
Global advisory, broking and solutions company Willis Towers Watson has chosen SimCorp Dimension to provide a front-to-back system for its global delegated investments business. Serving a global institutional investment community, Willis Towers Watson’s investments business will use a spectrum of SimCorp Dimension elements from Asset Manager in the front office to trade lifecycle management, investment accounting and SimCorp Coric client reporting. SimCorp’s integrated Investment Book of Record (IBOR) will support timely, accurate and centralised data.
Deutsche Bank Builds US Single Dealer Platform on Nasdaq Infrastructure
Deutsche Bank is using Nasdaq’s market technology infrastructure to operate its US-based single dealer platform. As a fully hosted platform, Nasdaq will also manage the system’s operations, including portions of risk controls, venue surveillance, trade reporting and clearing facilitation. The single dealer platform extends Deutsche Bank’s investment in electronic execution and is designed to create an attractive liquidity offer for clients that is unique to the bank.
Cappitech Launches New Insights Product
Cappitech has announced the launch of Insights, a product that enables compliance teams and risk managers to improve the data quality of their regulatory reporting and benchmark their performance to their peers. Insights provides actionable data at-a-glance, allowing firms to set KPIs and view the key reasons for trade rejections as well as granular data on late reports. Next-generation charting tools enable users to identify underlying problems in their processes. Cross-regulation, Insights provides comprehensive reporting analysis across MIFIR, EMIR, MAS, Canadian and ASIC Derivative Reporting. Insights is offered as part of Capptivate, Cappitech’s cross-regulation, cloud-based platform.
SmartStream and Cassini Partner to Help Firms Meet Uncleared Initial Margin Obligations
SmartStream Technologies has partnered Cassini Systems, a pre- and post-trade margin analytics provider for buy-side derivatives trading, to integrate SmartStream’s TLM Collateral Management with Cassini’s analytics platform. The SmartStream solution provides firms with automated data management to reduce operational risks associated with collateral management. Its integration with Cassini’s analytics platform will provide complete Standard Initial Margin Model (SIMM) calculations for OTC derivatives in the scope of phase 4 and 5 of BCBS/IOSCO’s margin requirements. TLM clients should be able to reduce counterparty disputes and operational costs, and gain transparency of the SIMM components and underlying risk of a portfolio.
Open:FactSet Marketplace Adds Thasos’ ConsumerStreams Geolocation Data
Thasos, an alternative data firm that transforms location information from mobile phones into real-time insights, has agreed with FactSet to offer its geolocation data on the Open:FactSet Marketplace (OFM). The OFM will feature Thasos’ ConsumerStreams product, which provides daily foot traffic data from US locations and includes historical data back to 2015 for time series analysis. The ConsumerStreams offering provides data concerning visits to retailers, restaurants, hotels, theme parks and other consumer-facing companies.
Fulbright Securities Deploys Horizon’s Options Market Making Platform
Hong Kong-based Fulbright Securities has deployed Horizon Software’s platform for market making on listed options connected to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company was looking for a technology vendor to enable delivery of complete trading solutions in options, from volatility management to market making, and selected Horizon on the basis of its business coverage, scalability, maintenance cost and software stability. Horizon says the market making platform will enhance Fulbright Securities’ cost-effectiveness and provide it with superior liquidity and more efficient trading flow.