Encompass, a provider of a Know Your Customer (KYC) automation platform, has set up a transformation team charged with ensuring banks reap the benefits of automation initiatives. The team will help companies define what success means and facilitate organisational alignment required to achieve KYC transformation.
Encompass transformation directors include former Barclays senior executive Howard Wimpory, who joined Encompass in London in 2021; Jo Scanlon, who supports customers in APAC; and Darren Marion, also part of the team in Sydney, Australia. Nicola Pickering, vice president, customer success and delivery at Encompass, comments: “It is great to hear from customers how valuable our team’s direction and thought leadership is in navigating KYC transformational change.”

Bloomberg has released a price transparency data solution aimed at helping clients tackle the regulatory challenges presented by SEC Rule 2a-5’s requirements for readily available market quotations. The solution is powered by BVAL, Bloomberg’s evaluated pricing service, and is
available to BVAL customers ahead of the compliance data of 8 September, 2022 for new SEC rule, which is part of a broader regulatory trend around pricing transparency and valuation oversight.

“Given the need to understand in detail what is behind a price, clients approached us seeking a solution to navigate compliance with Rule 2a-5,” says Brad Foster, global head of enterprise data content at Bloomberg. “BVAL’s price transparency data fields and our detailed rules engines enabled us to design a data solution to help compliance and legal teams adapt to the rule’s requirements for readily available market quotations.”

Bloomberg has released the common data format 3.1 (CDF 3.1) for Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs). The latest CDF published by the Global LEI Foundation includes six entity category data fields that depict the type of legal entity, such as investment fund or government entity, as well as residential government entities, types of fund relationships and corporate events like name or address changes.

These inclusions are designed to increases transparency of legal entity types, relationships and events, enabling firms to better understand their exposure to different types of legal entities, ensure they are meeting KYC requirements, and have access to meta data for onboarding clients. Steve Meizanis, global head of symbology and LEI services at Bloomberg, says: “The additional data being collected around mutual funds, government entities and corporate events allows the LEI to meet the evolving entity identification needs of the industry.”

Refinitiv, an LSEG business, has made its quantitative data available on Snowflake’s financial services data cloud, allowing asset managers and hedge funds to access the data alongside existing vendor and proprietary data on the Snowflake data cloud. The Refinitiv data includes a repository of 60-plus financial data sets, quantitative alpha models and other third-party and alternative data sets.

Austin Burkett, head of quantitative analytics and content at Refinitiv, comments: “Our clients require solutions that help speed and simplify the data intake and concordance process. Our quantitative analytics service is a trusted and longstanding offering in the market, and its delivery through Snowflake magnifies its value to our mutual clients.”

Fenergo has acquired Sentinels, an anti-money laundering (AML) transaction monitoring market entrant with artificial intelligence (AI) based technology. As a result of the deal, Fenergo’s clients and financial institutions will be able to combine rich KYC profiles with client behavioural data for continuous and granular KYC monitoring.

Marc Murphy, CEO of Fenergo, comments: “Our shared goal of aiming to solve the increasing compliance and operational challenges facing financial institutions made Sentinels an ideal fit. By adding transaction compliance to our existing client onboarding and product origination solutions, financial institutions can monitor and review client behaviour and identify risks on an ongoing basis. This blended approach to financial crime makes us well placed to address the rising compliance challenges faced by financial institutions more efficiently.”

The Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB) has published the final report on its UPI legal terms and conditions consultation and draft user legal documentation. The report focuses on industry feedback received on the consultation paper and confirms the legal provisions and associated mechanisms to be taken forward with respect to DSB legal documentation. Stakeholder feedback to the consultation covered topics including the introduction of a UPI Client Onboarding and Support Platform (COSP), use of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) for user onboarding verification, use of pre-payment for lower value user fees, and fee model variables to be used for annual fee determination.

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has released a data service designed to help clients comply with the Principal Adverse Impacts (PAIs) element of the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). The ICE SFDR PAI solution offers users event-triggered updates for all the mandatory adverse sustainability indicators applicable to investments in companies, sovereigns and supranationals.

The EU’s PAI regime requires specifically formatted disclosure on ESG-related indicators, including greenhouse gas emissions, board gender diversity, and energy consumption ratios, all of which are available in a conveniently formatted file or web viewing tool to clients as part of the ICE solution. The service also allows customers to link equity and fixed income securities to the closest disclosing corporate entity, offering a way to quickly match a security to the nearest parent entity with disclosed data.

Many financial institutions have yet to grasp the data implications of the European Union’s ESG reporting regulations, while others are scrambling to put in place processes to comply with the developing set of disclosure rules. Read the full story on ESG Insight here.

Deutsche Börse is close to acquiring 100% of Luxembourg-based fund data manager Kneip, expanding its offering in the asset management service space. Established in 1993, Kneip manages investor disclosure and data publication for more than 10,000 funds in over 40 countries, servicing over 30% of EU-based fund ISINS. Kneip will be integrated with the German exchange group’s established fund service platforms with the aim of creating a leading fund data service hub in Luxembourg. The transaction is expected to close this month.

A recently published ISO standard, ISO 5009, has the potential to extend the utility and value of Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) based digital identity tools by facilitating the inclusion of ‘official organisational role’ detail within them in a consistent manner. ISO 5009 paves the way for these tools – such as verifiable LEI (vLEI) credentials and digital certificates with embedded LEIs – to become a universally trusted method of digitally confirming the authenticity of people authorised to act on behalf of an organisation.

Published in February 2022, ISO 5009 permits global uniformity of the listing of official organisational roles by jurisdiction in a structured way. This means that roles of persons acting officially on behalf of an organisation may be specified by a legal entity and incorporated into existing and future digital assets leveraging the LEI.

Stephan Wolf, CEO at GLEIF comments: “In business and regulatory exchanges, it is important to confirm the official roles of people acting on behalf of organisations. In a digital context this can be challenging yet uncompromisingly necessary as we move towards creating and sustaining a digital global economy. For this reason, GLEIF has been committed to the realisation of this ISO standard as it is a significant step forward towards addressing that challenge.”