Asset management firm Blackrock is trialling Symphony’s new financial messaging app. The app is being tested by part of Blackrock’s workforce and it is “looking to roll it out more widely in the coming months”. Blackrock is a major name to come onboard and the firm has 13,000 employees. However, Symphony has had success before […]
Marstone, a New York-based financial services firm, has teamed up with IBM Watson for Wealth Management to offer digital advice assisted by cognitive computing. The plan is for Marstone’s platform, powered by Watson, to use data, patterns and natural language to provide cognitive advice and learn from experience. Margaret Hartigan, chief executive of Marstone, says […]
Texas-based asset administrator, Virtus Partners, has gone live with new back office lending system, FusionBanking LoanIQ, supplied by Misys. The new platform supports full-service agency administration and bank portfolio loan administration. It covers SME, commercial and syndicated lending. The contract was signed in November last year. The implementation work took around three months and came […]
London-based Calastone, the global funds transaction network, has launched Data Services, a market intelligence solution for fund managers. Calastone says that MiFID II, the European regulatory framework designed to “improve the transparency and oversight of financial markets”, is moving responsibility to understand the distribution chain from distributors and platform providers to fund managers. Rob Swan, […]
Trading platform provider Fidessa has reported a growth in revenue in 2015 up 7%, rising to £295.5 million up from £275 million in 2014, despite the reduction and closure of many sell-side trading operations over the last 12 months. The firm notes that the closure of the Jefferies Group’s Bache futures unit and Standard Chartered […]
Goldman Sachs has launched a new FICC Systematic Market Making (SMM) unit. SMM will consolidate its e-trading assets and capabilities across FICC. The move was reported in an internal memo as reflecting changes in market structure and client needs. The memo, signed by several executives including group chief information officer Martin Chavez, says, “Our ability to […]
Investment manager AllianceBernstein is working with Interactive Data, to help evaluate its trade execution quality and perform transaction cost analysis (TCA). The work will be done across various mutual funds and separately managed portfolios using Interactive Data’s Best Execution (Best Ex) service. The service leverages its Continuous Evaluated Fixed-Income Pricing to run TCA for fixed-income […]
There is an uncanny similarity between Prime Minster David Cameron’s emphasis of moving from a “low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, and lower welfare society” and a shifting focus among the asset management community.
Project Neptune, the fixed income trading initiative between a group of 42 large banks and asset managers, has gone live with its pilot production network, bringing the project closer to its ‘hard’ platform later this year.
The need for financial institutions to accurately gauge their exposure to myriad sources of risk has seldom, if ever, been greater. The credit crisis toward the end of the last decade must have made that clear, and if bankers managed to avoid getting the message back then, the point has been driven home ever since by regulators around the world
Long-term investors are deeply concerned about their ability to find liquidity, with nearly 90% afraid that predatory high-frequency traders are preying on their flows, according to a new survey by block-trading network Liquidnet.
Temenos has moved into the fund administration business with a €235 million acquisition of Luxembourg-based Multifonds, which counts a number of Tier 1 institutions as users of its fund administration platform.
Fixed income markets have historically been a bastion of high-touch trading, with manual processes, large tickets and little standardisation. But as recent years have seen inventory slashed and balance sheets cut in face of rising regulatory pressure, finding liquidity has become more of a challenge. A group of banks are hoping to reinvigorate the market though a standardised messaging system.
Continuing its policy of offering products that fit across user workflows, Bloomberg has moved in to the transaction reporting space in Europe. The company’s Trade Order Management System has been granted approval by the Financial Conduct Authority to report securities with an ISIN and OTC derivatives as part of the UK’s Approved Reporting Mechanisms regime.
The cyber-attack on Sony Pictures at the end of last year highlighted something that IT and security people in financial services have known for some time – the modern networked environment is far less secure than most people are prepared to admit …
SmartStream Technologies has acquired the assets of IBM’s Algorithmics Collateral solution and will add it to its existing solutions for the automation of the end-to-end post trade lifecycle, rebranding it as TLM Collateral Management. The system provides collateral lifecycle automation for buy- and sell-side institutions, custodians and asset servicers, large and small.
ICAP is combining its EBS foreign exchange and BrokerTec fixed income electronic trading platforms into one business unit. The change is“an internal management reorganisation” and the platforms will remain separate for the foreseeable future.
Fund managers are showing a “significantly more positive attitude” to the imminent Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive. Initial fears appear to have subsided, the challenges and predicted costs have significantly reduced and the industry is realising the opportunities.
One company grateful for the flurry of publicity given to the practice of front-running orders by the publication of Michael Lewis’s book Flash Boys earlier this year is New York-based Trillium, whose Surveyor market manipulation detection tool can be used to detect the practice.
Could the establishment of an enhanced outsourcing oversight capability do more for asset managers than simply satisfy the FCA? A more mature set of oversight metrics could be used to provide foresight into how the outsourcer might perform in the future.
Broadridge Financial Solutions has formed an alliance with UK software developer Lombard Risk Management under which Lombard’s collateral management system will be integrated into Broadridge’s applications and infrastructure services.
Following the tumultuous change that came in the wake of the subprime crisis, capital markets firms have yet to regain a strong foothold but 2014 is showing increasing evidence of a shift to a higher gear.
Enlightened buy-side firms are facing the challenges of high-touch regulation, fragmented liquidity and ongoing cost pressures head on and developing new business models and approaches at every stage of their workflow.
One may speculate that with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party having secured a quite remarkable third term in office, the last in a long line of potential hurdles for the advocates of a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) in Europe has been overcome
Regulation is a key driver of change on IT strategies across the wealth management sector, and brings huge challenges, especially for smaller players: predictions are that the cost of compliance may rise by a further 16% by 2015.
BNP Paribas Securities Services has added Collateral Access, an integrated and comprehensive collateral management system for both buy-side and sell-side clients.
Broadridge Financial Solutions is to acquire Bonaire Software Solutions, a provider of asset management fee calculation, billing, and revenue and expense management solutions.
The funds industry is going through a time of great change, with a combination of regulation, cost pressure, consolidation and globalisation forcing many participants to take a close look at their business and operating models and consider what their future role in the ecosystem should be. For some, this means outsourcing activities, creating opportunities for […]
The cost to fully upgrade the financial industry’s infrastructure to make efficient use of collateral will reach $53 billion, according to new research by Celent – but too much standardisation could do more harm than good, warns SIX Securities Services.
An analysis of mobile solutions for financial advisors concludes that applications to support client interaction and advisory services “will become one of the most industry-disruptive, but potentially most rewarding” developments in the wealth management sector. This is the main finding of Mobile Apps for Financial Advisors and Wealth Managers by Swiss research company MyPrivateBanking Research. […]
Trading technology company ConvergEx Group has released a new suite of algorithms designed to capitalise on growing interest among market participants in multi-legged options trading strategies.
While changes to the OTC derivatives world grab the headlines, trading is moving to a cross asset world, largely driven by regulation and standardisation – and after a few years of pain, firms may find that they are better off as a result.
Global investment banks need to stop focusing on easy opportunities and start innovating, according to a new report by US business consultancy AlixPartners – even if that means unbundling services and embracing smaller financial institutions as allies.
