As part of the move, Nasdaq will integrate its clearing platform, Nasdaq Real-Time Clearing, into FIA Tech’s Trade Data Network.

The Trade Data Network combines trade data from the buy-side, brokers, clearing houses and clearing members into a common framework, establishing a shared source of clearing activity for participating firms.

The integration of Nasdaq’s clearing platform will increase the volume and quality of post-trade data available to FIA Tech’s members, alongside providing central counterparty clearinghouses (CCPs) using Nasdaq’s clearing platform and end-users with the ability to carry out improved risk analysis, operate with greater capital efficiency, and lower overall risk exposure.

The functionality will help reduce systemic inefficiency across the global post-trade network, according to the two firms.

“There is a global necessity to upgrade legacy post-trade technology platforms, and interoperability must sit at the heart of the new global framework,” said Magnus Haglind, senior vice president and head of products, marketplace technology at Nasdaq.

“A consistent operating model for data, systems and processes can deliver substantial benefits to market participants through more efficient use of capital and a more resilient operating model.”   

FIA Tech’s Trade Data Network offers market participants and post-trade service providers the tools to bolster middle- and back-office processes, including trade-date clearing, give-ups, fee and commissions management, while also helping eliminate reconciliations across these functions. 

The post-trade landscape is expected to experience it’s biggest shake up in years with the shift to T+1 settlement going live today, 28 May.

Read more: T+1 settlement: The seismic post-trade change impacting the trading desk

“Nasdaq’s integration of its strategic Real-Time Clearing system into the Trade Data Network will increase standardisation and network adoption,” said Nick Solinger, president and chief executive of FIA Tech.

The post Nasdaq and FIA Tech partner to improve resiliency of post-trade infrastructure appeared first on The TRADE.

Before this extension, the Atlantis settlement platform facilitated brokerage payments from clearing brokers to executing brokers. 

The first buy-side participant on Atlantis has been confirmed to be a multi-strategy, multi-billion dollar hedge fund.

The Atlantis brokerage payment platform processes more than 170 million trades a year, with its offering set up as a standardised central hub “with high rates of automation with integrated workflows for reconciling fees and resolving disputes”.

Atlantis consumes data from sources including clearing houses and interdealer brokers. Currently, the platform has 45 institutions which settle across 34 clearing houses (with all global ETD markets enabled for settlement).

Read more – FIA Tech expands Atlantis brokerage platform with US listed options

Nick Solinger, president and chief executive of FIA Tech, said: “Buy-side firms and end-users in ETD face many of the challenges sell-side firms face in managing fees, commissions and brokerage. We are pleased whenever we can help streamline operations and remove costs for clients and their brokers. 

“Firms using Atlantis enjoy automated settlement rates up to 99% and often have 2-3x productivity of their brokerage payables and receivables teams vs firms not using Atlantis.”

The post FIA Tech expands settlement platform remit to include buy-side appeared first on The TRADE.

The new development will provide SGX member firms that are subscribed to TDN with improved transparency into their trade give up/take in process on SGX – including the ability to observe the current status of all their SGX fills.

FIA Tech also stated that TDN can provide resiliency services by securely replicating and storing all trading activity and messages from SGX as with all connected exchanges. Risk management and recovery will be improved by this in the event of a systemic outage such as a cyberattack or technology failure. 

SGX becomes the third exchange to connect to the TDN, following CME Group and Eurex.

“As Asia’s leading derivatives marketplace across multiple asset classes, trust and efficiency are always top-of-mind, and we look forward to broadening our work with FIA Tech,” said Alison King, head of trading and clearing services for equities at SGX Group.

The TDN provides market infrastructure and shared ledger of trading information to combat the fragmentation and lack of transparency in exchange-traded derivatives (ETD) post-trade processing.

The initiative currently includes 16 banks/brokers as well as 50 investment managers and hedge funds with combined assets under management of more than $37 trillion.

Earlier this year, FIA Tech enhanced TDN to support the operational resiliency demands of clearing firms utilising the platform. The new improvements allow users to securely replicate and store all trading activity at any exchange connected to the network, ensuring speedier recovery in the event of a systemic outage. 

“We are delighted to have SGX connected to TDN and look forward to having SGX TDN members fully operational soon,” said Nick Solinger, president and chief executive of FIA Tech.

“This is a significant milestone for TDN, and working with our clearing firms and connected exchanges like SGX, we hope to provide increased operational resilience and efficiency in the exchange traded derivatives industry.”

The post FIA Tech connects Trade Data Network to Singapore Exchange appeared first on The TRADE.

Over recent months, historical Level 3 data provider BMLL has seen a surge in activity as it continues to expand its equities and ETF data coverage. Its products now include data from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), Cboe Europe Indices, and more recently this month, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Speaking to The TRADE last week, Paul Humphrey, chief executive of BMLL, explained that these recent moves had come in response to client demand for enhanced coverage.

“Our clients and market participants overall are demanding increasingly comprehensive, high quality data sets to understand market behaviour and we are delighted to provide them with the insights they need to make more informed trading decisions.”

Data from the added exchanges are available to BMLL users across the buy- and sell-side, as well as global exchange groups. Other inclusions earlier this year include: Cboe Japan, Japannext, and Singapore Exchange.

In other exchange news, the Johannesburg stock exchange launched a joint venture with big xyt in a bid to offer greater accessibility to data analytics to international trading venues and firms of all sizes.

The JV – big xyt ecosystems – is set to offer the Trade Explorer data platform, recently launched in South Africa, to financial centres globally.

Speaking at the time, Leila Fourie, chief executive of JSE Group, said: “All trading venues understand the need for a market data business adjacent to the core mission of providing high quality markets.”

There has also been notable movement in bonds offerings, which included updates from Overbond, Mizuho EMEA, and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).

In May, Overbond entered into an agreement to integrate European fixed-income transaction data from Deutsche Börse into its AI-aggregated data feeds and automated bond trading.

With this move, Overbond plans to “generate a robust European fixed-income trading data set,” aimed at plugging the gap in the fixed income markets in Europe that continue to be challenges for traders. The firm said its combination with Clearstream transaction data would create “the most robust European AI training data set available for the benefit of a better informed fixed income in Europe”.

The following month, Mizuho EMEA joined Neptune network as axe dealer for bonds in a move linked to a desire from the buy-side to access higher quality data from liquidity providers.

Byron Cooper-Fogarty, chief operating officer at Neptune, at the time highlighted that “this has been a client driven addition, as buy-side traders and portfolio managers continue to ask for high quality data from liquidity providers such as Mizuho.”

More recently, ICE made some updates to its corporate bond offering, relaunching its sweeps protocol – ICE RMA – in response to market demand.

Peter Borstelmann, president of ICE Bonds, highlighted that there was a notable demand for improvement in the space and the development of a product superior to that already in the market.

Speaking to The TRADE, he explained: “We heard from our partners that they wanted a strong competitor in this space and nobody had yet been able to step [into] that capacity.  We saw this as an opportunity to invest in something that we were the initial creators of and would be a nice complement to our existing ATS liquidity network […] we invested in both human capital and technology to bring an intuitive and easy product to market and the initial adoption and activity validates this investment.”

Also launched into the market in recent months were updates to FX offerings from several players. Earlier this month, August, Bloomberg announced that it had added a new suite of FX pricing quality tools in a bid to enhance RFQ pricing requests.

The tools – available to clients of its premier multi-bank FX trading platform (FXGO), through MISX, Bloomberg’s multi-asset reporting tool for electronic trading – allow price markers to more quickly identify where and why opportunities to price are being missed.

Tod Van Name, global head of foreign exchange electronic trading at Bloomberg highlighted the importance of this enhanced tool and the transparency and availability of real time information that it provides to their clients for trading operations.

“These new pricing quality analytics in MISX provide both buy- and sell-side market participants with unparalleled breadth and depth of analysis and output, that can help them make more informed trading decisions and achieve better outcomes.”

Guillaume Carreno, global head of electronic client connectivity at Crédit Agricole CIB, added: “The additional information, especially the “Best Alternative” data, has enabled us to identify areas where we can further improve the pricing quality for our clients. The productivity efficiency we gain with this new feature is an important added value.”

Similarly, Trading Technologies (TT) has been making a move to establish itself in FX, launching a new business line in June following its entry into the fixed income market for the first time in March with its acquisition of AxeTrading.

In August, TT acquired Abel Noser’s buy-side TCA subsidiary, building on its continued multi-asset data and analytics expansion.

“This acquisition enhances our appeal to the buy-side with an offering that spans multiple asset classes which we can fortify with the wealth of anonymised data harnessed through our platform,” said Trading Technologies chief executive officer Keith Todd.

Elsewhere, players have made enhancements aimed at assisting traders with their operational needs, seeking to optimise, secure, and streamline processes.

In June, futures industry technology provider FIA Tech enhanced its Trade Data Network (TDN) to support the operational resiliency demands of clearing firms utilising the platform. 

From now, users of TDN are able to securely replicate and store all trading activity at any exchange connected to the network, resulting in speedier recovery in the event of a systemic outage. 

Additionally, the following month, FlexTrade and TRAction announced a new integration aimed at alleviating the “operational burden” of transaction reporting on the buy-side trading desk.

Its system users can use this update in daily transaction reporting processes, by automatically reporting their data through the TRAction platform in the appropriate format. (Spark EMS users can also use TRAction for Emir, Mifir, ASIC, MAS and Canadian reporting).

At the time, the pair claimed that this direct integrated approach “removes formerly manual tasks, reducing errors and improving quality”.

More recently, MarketAxess announced plans to acquire multi-asset algorithmic trading provider Pragma, betting on this move as a sure way to enhance its clients’ workflows.

“Our acquisition of Pragma underscores MarketAxess’ commitment to innovating, integrating, and providing our clients with quantitative, AI-powered technology solutions powered by proprietary data designed to simplify and enhance their workflows,” said Chris Concannon, chief executive officer of MarketAxess. 

David Mechner, founder and chief executive of Pragma, added: “Pragma and MarketAxess share a common mission of using technology and automation to improve trader efficiency and generate superior trading outcomes for investors.”

These recent surge in activity, across various sectors and asset classes, makes clear how seriously firms are taking demands from the market. Providers are demonstrably taking note of the market’s call for better and more accessible data, acutely aware that falling behind the client demand curve now will be increasingly detrimental to business in the long run.

Whether it be through acquisitions to “plug gaps,” joint ventures to share expertise, or straightforward investment in technological updates, what is clear is that providers across the board know where priorities need to lie as the market undergoes significant change. 

Driven by mounting regulatory pressures, increased globalisation, and general uncertainty as regards future trading rules, the need for better data is clear. It’s do or die.

The post Data arms race heats up as venues and vendors eye buy-side business through new initiatives appeared first on The TRADE.

Users of TDN will now be able to securely replicate and store all trading activity at any exchange connected to the network, which will help ensure speedier recovery in the event of a systemic outage such as a cyberattack or technology failure.

FIA Tech has already successfully completed a stress test, which it claims demonstrated the ability to securely capture and replay five trading days of activity in under four hours for all existing clearing firms using the platform.

The TDN is an initiative which FIA Tech describes as a shared ledger of trading information to address the fragmentation and lack of transparency in exchange traded derivatives (ETD) post-trade processing.

The initiative is made up of 16 banks or brokers, as well as 40 investment managers and hedge funds with combined assets under management of more than $37 trillion.

TDN’s initial rollout focused on allocations processing and trade confirmations, providing trade lifecycle transparency spanning various brokers and the clearinghouse on each trade.

FIA Tech stated that adding capability and scalability to support the operational resiliency needs of firms was a natural extension of the platform.

“We designed TDN to scale to the global needs of clearing firms and their clients, and are pleased to reach this significant technical milestone,” said Nick Solinger, president and chief executive of FIA Tech.

“Working with our clearing firms and connected exchanges, we hope to provide comprehensive solutions for resilience against systemic outages in the future. We look forward to working with the industry on best practices to further mitigate risk.”

The post FIA Tech supports operational resiliency through enhancement of Trade Data Network appeared first on The TRADE.

The TDN initiative provides a shared ledger of trading information specifically aimed at addressing current fragmentation and lack of transparency which exists in exchange traded derivatives (ETD) post-trade processing.

According to the business, the initial rollout “is focused on allocations processing and trade confirmations, with trade lifecycle transparency across the multiple brokers and the clearinghouse on each trade”.

Its roll-out is also set to reduce overall costs and clearing delays for brokers, as well as increasing value for independent software vendors through reducing the complexity of delivering services to clients.

Currently, the TDN comprises 16 banks and brokers and 40 investment managers and hedge funds. Altogether the combined assets under management is more than $37 trillion. Its offering spans across metrics tracking, benchmarking and reporting.

Speaking to the strategic funding for the next stage of development, Nick Solinger, president and chief executive of FIA Tech, said: “TDN has already proven its operational resiliency for participants in recent times of high market volumes and volatility.”

Following its investment, BNP Paribas now forms part of FIA Tech’s ownership consortium and is set to serve on its board of directors.

Raphael Masgnaux, head of global technology platforms for global markets at BNP Paribas, highlighted the close relationship the business has shared with FIA Tech over the years and added: “Technology is a central pillar of BNP Paribas’ GTS 25 (Growth Technology Sustainability) Strategic Plan, and the TDN initiative promises to deliver a pivotal platform for the ETD industry.”

Back in 2021, ten global clearing firms took part in a $44 million investment in FIA Tech to fund the spin-off of the firm and develop its existing products serving the derivatives markets.

Investors at that time included: ABN AMRO Clearing, Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Wells Fargo.

The post Major sell-side banks lead $25.4 million funding round in FIA Tech appeared first on The TRADE.

FIA Tech’s Databank Network will integrate into the Symphony platform via the introduction of a new FIA Tech Bot, which will provide access to data sets including contract specifications, exchange fees, position limits, cash and collateral management data, clearinghouse calendars and corporate actions through queries. The new bot will go live in Q2 of this year.

The Databank Network aims to bring together data providers including independent software vendors (ISVs), exchanges and clearing houses into an interoperable global network to simplify the use of reference data, analytics and software solutions from participating firms.

Reference data is unified by the network from more than 80 exchanges and central counterparties globally, index providers and ISVs.

Symphony will provide access to the new bot, enabling mutual customers to integrate the datasets into workflows and applications, alongside providing access to the data via interaction with chatbots.

End-users will be able to build and save queries against their available data sets, create scheduled notifications against these and make changes to underlying data sets.

“This partnership will greatly enrich the user experience for FIA Tech clients and will facilitate collaboration across our combined user base. We are pleased to be working with Symphony removing hurdles inside and between institutions,” said Nick Solinger, president and chief executive of FIA Tech.

Natural language processing data analytics solution Amenity Analytics – which was acquired by Symphony last year – provides actionable insights to portfolio managers, research professionals, analysts and other financial markets participants. FIA Tech and Symphony announced that they plan to integrate Amenity Analytics’ offering into the FIA Tech bot later this year.

“We are excited to have FIA Tech on Symphony to serve such a relevant community within financial services,” said Brad Levy, chief executive of Symphony.

“Symphony is currently serving more 600,000 financial professionals globally and becoming more relevant everyday as volatility increases in the market and efficient, instant communication grows in importance.”

The post FIA Tech partners with Symphony to enhance capital markets data workflows appeared first on The TRADE.

The Financial Markets Standards Board (FMSB) launched its pilot mentoring programme to give members of the financial community direct boardroom experience. FMSB identified Sabina Liu, the head of equities trading sales at the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and Emma Mangan, newly appointed merchant and card European head of technology at JP Morgan, as the first participants, after a successful interview process. Liu is also the global co-chair of LSEG’s women’s network WIN, influencing and shaping diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the financial services industry. She started the mentoring programme in January 2023. The FMSB Board mentoring programme expects to operate on an annual basis, and the opportunity to participate in the programme in 2024 will be made available to interested parties in early 2024.

Technology provider for the futures industry FIA Tech appointed Gregg Whitbread in the newly created role of senior manager, global product sales. Based in London, Whitbread will report to Andrew La Manna, FIA Tech’s head of business development. Whitbread joined FIA Tech from Euromoney TRADEDATA, where he served for 27 years, most recently as business development director and global head of business development. While at Euromoney TRADEDATA, Whitbread helped build out the firm’s reference data product offering and sales. His experience within exchange traded derivatives ranges across reference data, operations and technology. As part of Whitbread’s new role at FIA Tech, he will focus on building out the sales of the firm’s Databank offering to buy-side institutions across Europe.  

The post People Moves Monday: New hires from the industry appeared first on The TRADE.

The London subsidiary, which is based in Paddington, becomes FIA Tech’s fourth office: following Washington DC, New York and Nashville.

The new subsidiary is also FIA Tech’s first office outside of the US.

“The UK and Europe are core markets for FIA Tech’s customer base and London is a global hub for FinTech innovation,” said Nick Solinger, chief executive of FIA Tech.

“FIA Tech will be expanding in R&D and client services to support our rapid growth and London offers unparalleled access to a cutting edge FinTech talent base.”

Last year, FIA Tech revealed that it had received an investment of $44 million from ten leading clearing firms to help support the strategic growth of the company.

Since then, the newly capitalised firm has been investing in the development of existing products, as well as the launch of new, innovative solutions to improve market infrastructure across the listed and cleared derivatives industry.

FIA Tech said in a statement that it will continue to work in partnership with the broader industry, including exchanges, clearinghouses, clearing firms and other intermediaries, independent software vendors, buy-side firms and end users to bring efficiency to the exchange traded and cleared derivatives industry. 

FIA Tech has recently announced several new initiatives, including the introduction of a comprehensive set of reference data products developed together with exchanges, CCPs, regulators and data providers to remove friction in trading futures and to help with regulatory compliance.

In November, FIA Tech introduced an analytics and data service to simplify trading of index futures. The new solution, which was created in partnership with exchanges and index providers, aims to help classify non-US indices for US firms.

The post FIA Tech expands into the UK with new London-based subsidiary appeared first on The TRADE.

Index futures with significant global volume have experienced classification changes over the past year, which unexpectedly required several US-based clients to offload positions and halt trading the products.

FIA Tech’s new analytics and data service will provide firms with a central source of validated data to use for non-US index classifications. In addition, the service will allow market participants to come to accurate, consistent determinations through the provision of consistent market data and analytics.

For firms to ensure that they remain compliant with regulations, clearing firms, buy-side firms and exchanges should be able to monitor the regulatory classification of index futures on a continuous basis.

The futures exchanges and index providers FIA Tech has partnered with include FTSE Russell, MSCI, Standard & Poors and Taiwan Index Plus Corporation.

The regulatory requirements of the joint Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission jurisdiction over non-US index futures have led the classification of indices as “narrow based” or “broad based” to drive how and whether products can be traded by US clients.

“FTSE Russell is pleased to have worked with FIA Tech on this important derivatives industry initiative to create a consistent source of index information regarding non-US index-based FTSE Russell index linked derivatives,” said Ricardo Manrique, director, derivatives strategy, FTSE Russell.

“This new analytics tool will provide market participants with important insights to help them navigate the complicated regulatory landscape of global index futures.”

Exchanges including Nasdaq, B3, Tokyo Stock Exchange, TSX, BME Market Data, Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, Budapest Stock Exchange and Matba Rofex partnered with FIA Tech to design the service.

According to FIA Tech, the new service has been deployed to its existing reference data network to provide a validated source of data for use by each institution’s compliance teams.

“Uncertainty about the regulations and the complexity in performing the analyses could discourage use of these important products to manage risk or negatively impact liquidity,” said Nick Solinger, chief executive of FIA Tech.

“We are pleased to be working with the leading exchanges, index providers and global clearing firms on a solution for this industry challenge.”

The post FIA Tech to launch analytic service to simplify trading of index futures appeared first on The TRADE.