Our free fintech update also offers news from PIMCO, OpenGamma, TIG, SS&C, IHS Markit, EDI and Columba Systems.
FINRA CAT Will Work with AWS
The big data market surveillance project known as the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) will be using the cloud computing infrastructure of Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, officials say.
FINRA CAT, LLC, a subsidiary of the self-regulatory organization Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has picked AWS “to streamline and secure tracking of more than 100 billion daily financial market events from 22 stock exchanges and 1,500 broker dealer firms,” officials say. The FINRA CAT effort is intended to protect investors by helping regulators upgrade their monitoring of trading via U.S. securities markets.
The CAT system will use “AWS’s storage, compute, database, analytics, and security services,” according to the AWS release. In particular, FINRA CAT officials will be using the Amazon Aurora for its primary database needs, Amazon Redshift for data warehousing, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and AWS’s security and compliance capabilities to develop the surveillance platform.
CAT participants will use the Amazon EMR support “to analyze vast amounts of data quickly and cost-effectively at scale, and Amazon Redshift, which makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3,” officials say. “CAT will be able to provide insights on market trading activities to SROs and the SEC so that they can identify anomalies in market data in order to better detect and prosecute illegal market activity and protect investors.”
The CAT repository of all equity and listed options data for regulatory compliance purposes will use security capabilities such as AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Amazon GuardDuty, and AWS CloudTrail to secure sensitive financial data, officials say.
The surveillance system “ingests more than 100 billion market events per day, pulling together data from 22 stock exchanges and 1,500 broker dealer firms, enabling the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Self-Regulatory Organizations (SROs) to analyze CAT data.”
The FINRA CAT organization in its role as the CAT Plan Processor will build and manage the CAT platform, which will serve as “the repository for all equities and listed options transaction data in the U.S. and will track market trading activity by following orders throughout their life cycle,” according to officials.
PIMCO to Use OpenGamma Solution
Investment management giant PIMCO will be putting vendor OpenGamma’s analytics to work via operational processes designed to optimize derivatives margin for clients, officials say.
PIMCO will use OpenGamma’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to help clients reduce margin financing costs for derivatives “by evaluating all available clearing options across global exchanges and clearing houses,” officials say.
“Fixed income asset managers need to adapt the way they trade derivatives under new regulations like uncleared margin rules” says Josh Ratner, executive vice president, head of Americas operations of PIMCO, in a prepared statement.
TIG Advisors Picks SS&C for Portfolio Accounting
SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. reports that Tiedemann Investment Group (TIG), a New York-based alternative investment advisor, has selected SS&C’s Geneva for portfolio accounting.
Geneva is a real-time dual-entry accounting system featuring closed-period, dynamic and knowledge date-based reporting functionality, SS&C says in a statement.
Tiedemann Investment Group Advisors is also using SS&C’s order management system, Eze, for order management and compliance, SS&C adds.
Markit N.V. to be Benchmark Administrator in the Netherlands
IHS Markit, a specialist in the provision of securities information, analytics and solutions, reports that the Netherlands Authority for Financial Markets has authorized its Dutch entity, Markit N.V., to be a benchmark administrator under the European Benchmark Regulation (BMR).
IHS Markit points out that it is the first benchmark administrator to be authorized by national competent authorities in both the U.K. and the EU27. In July 2018, IHS Markit was approved as an authorized benchmark administrator by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the U.K.
The authorizations mean that IHS Markit can offer more options to customers of its index administration services, especially in the event the U.K. exits the European Union, officials say. It can also endorse third country benchmarks for use in the E.U. and assist third country benchmark administrators gain recognition in the EU27.
London-based IHS Markit tallies more than 50,000 business and government customers, including 80 percent of the Fortune Global 500.
EDI & Columba Systems Partner for Data Service
Exchange Data International, a provider of global security corporate actions, pricing and reference data, reports the advent of a partnership with Columba Systems, an provider of international future financial events data to both sell-side and buy-side institutions.
With this partnership, clients will be able to access three different types of data —the dates and release times of company results, company meetings and the dates of upcoming trade Shows and investor conferences, from company events worldwide.
EDI specifies that the data feed is delivered as a zipped package including the customized files, and that the delivery method and period will depend on client requirements, but the typical options include FTP, or file transfer protocol, put or fetch.
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