We at FTF and FTF News focus much of our attention on post-trade operations. But every once in a while we take a look at some of the breakthroughs happening in the front office. Such advances ripple through to the middle- and back-office Ops teams. A case in point is the quantitative trading firm Hudson… Read More >>
Global Relay Links to OpenAI’s ChatGPT API
Global Relay, a provider of communications compliance solutions, is embracing a generative artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology provider to help its financial services clients, officials say. For instance, the self-regulatory organization (SRO) Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has requirements for overseeing A.I. chatbot communications, “mandating that AI-driven communications must adhere to the same supervision, content, and… Read More >>
Gresham & Alveo Merge to Offer More Data Services
Following a complex set of financial maneuvers, data reconciliation vendor Gresham Technologies has merged with Alveo, a market data integration and analytics solutions provider, via a transaction that Alveo’s majority owner private equity firm STG Partners helped make happen, officials say. In fact, before the current merger, STG Partners and Alliance Bidco, a company owned… Read More >>
Can a Proposed Standard Stop SSI Failures?
Standard Settlement Instructions (SSIs) are important for securities transactions because they specify the location for delivery after execution. However, SSIs cause a high rate of failures at the settlement stage, and the Financial Markets Standards Board (FMSB) is taking steps to rectify the situation. The ongoing use of “manual SSI exchanges, which are prone to… Read More >>
Apex Fintech Launches Platform for Building Investment Infrastructures
Apex Fintech Solutions is launching an investment infrastructure platform, dubbed Apex Ascend, that has been designed to help clients improve their capability to “operate efficiently and better navigate risk on a global scale,” officials say. The cloud-native platform offers built-in tools and data to help firms create, integrate, scale, and operate globally and offers key… Read More >>
Achieve T+1 Harmony with U.S. Before E.U.: Task Force
The investment management industry believes that the U.K. being out of sync with the T+1 settlement of the U.S. is a bigger problem than with the European Union, and the U.K. needs to get its “skates on” with implementation. That’s according to Andrew Douglas, chair of the U.K. Accelerated Settlement Task Force (AST), which advocates… Read More >>
BNP Paribas Adds Analytics to FX Credit Allocation
French banking giant BNP Paribas has added to a solution that it’s using to streamline the allocation of credit for FX transactions between banks — Dynamic Credit from CobaltFX — with the deployment of the CobaltFX Analytics offering, officials say. The newly launched CobaltFX Analytics offering builds on the Dynamic Credit product, which has been… Read More >>
Canada Life Asset Management Taps Northern Trust
The Canada Life Asset Management (CLAM) group has picked Northern Trust to provide asset servicing solutions because of the provider’s focus on operating model efficiency and on data quality, according to the firm. The new arrangement will see Northern Trust providing middle office outsourcing, global custody, securities lending, fund administration, and depositary services which should… Read More >>
ANNA, DTIF & GDF to Build Links to Digital Assets
The Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) and the Digital Token Identifier Foundation (DTI Foundation) want to build “a strong foundation” that links traditional and digital finance through a new partnership with Global Digital Finance (GDF), officials say. The GDF is a non-profit association of member firms, which offers “an open innovation platform for advocating… Read More >>
DTCC & Chainlink Explore Mutual Fund Tokenization
The DTCC and Chainlink have been busy with something they are calling the “Smart NAV pilot,” which was an attempt to apply the digital asset capabilities of both organizations to mutual fund tokenization. (NAV is “net asset value,” or an investment firm’s total assets once all liabilities have been subtracted.) In mid-May, both players went… Read More >>
