For better or worse, financial institutions are more risk averse than ever. This is the direct result of continuing and growing regulatory scrutiny over a broad range of activities, including the compliance of financial institutions in areas such as international sanctions, the prevention of money laundering, the funding of terrorism or the facilitation of tax evasion.
When first reports of an integrated communications project that had attracted a $66 million investment from a consortium of banks led by Goldman Sachs appeared last year, there was an element of cloak and dagger about the enterprise. The truth is both more prosaic and more interesting according to David Gurle, chief executive and founder of the company behind it.
Firms that excel at data analytics also achieve better financial results according a study by EY. High-growth companies are twice as likely to focus on data and analytics in revenue-generating areas such as marketing and sales,
In 2015, organisations in the business finance solutions space are likely to spend significantly on business intelligence and analytics. This data goldmine can help organisations unlock hidden opportunities and insights
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.
Symphony Communications, a financial industry messaging service provider, has acquired a rival service provided by Markit, a financial data management provider. The move may bolster Symphony’s ability to rival more entrenched, expensive cloud-based chat services used by financial institutions.
The volume, speed and power of technology has transformed the Financial Services industry into one the most sophisticated data driven sectors in the global economy, allowing for the execution of complex global transactions at the push of a button. From high frequency trading to eCommerce to mobile banking, the financial sector is generating a huge amounts of data – in fact, almost too much data. Like individuals, institutions are facing an information overload that is limiting the promise and opportunity of technology.
Today’s consumers have high expectations − and for good reason. They have become accustomed to, and in today’s connected world, demand, anytime/anywhere access to the products, services, and information they desire and need
FIX Trading Community has combined all its high performance trading and market data initiatives into a single working group, emphasising the importance that high performance has in the FIX family of standards. The next generation of the FIX Protocol will fully support high performance on all levels (application, presentation, session) to offer an open standard that can replace today’s proprietary interfaces for high performance trading and market data.
JP Rangaswami has been appointed as chief data officer at Deutsche Bank, a newly-created role in which he will “play a key role in standardising the bank’s processes, tools and governance around information and in supporting its digital strategy”.
In the ongoing discussion about the need to use data to increase business value, it is imperative to substantiate the argument with practical, real-world use cases. Otherwise, the debate becomes just another line of marketing waffle around big data – an area already suffering from too much hype.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its drive to monitor and enforce the financial markets by implementing new surveillance tools to examine and inspect reconciliations. The deal comes as the US regulator charges Barclays with failing to build adequate compliance systems and the bank suffers a fine in the UK.
Banks should focus their efforts on using data to provide better services to merchants, retail customers and other businesses – and they can build a more efficient business, according to a new report by Kurt Salmon and the European Financial Management and Marketing Association.
All banks, whatever their size rely on data to make decisions. With that in mind getting that data in a timely manner and in a format that can be digested easily is critical. So why can this be so difficult? We are all used to receiving reports from our systems and even the most rudimentary examples will utilise some form of analytics, however simple. We might be getting the reports and be used to the status quo, but is your analytics platform getting the better of you?
Regulatory mandates call for the financial services industry to collaborate and rethink its data supply chain to tackle systemic risk and improve transparency. Looking at how the retail industry manages its supply chain could hold the key.
EY is inviting start-up tech companies to compete in a competition looking for solutions to the problems posed by “right to be forgotten” regulations.
Industry veteran Tom Dalglish has joined SmartStream Technologies as head of transformation services, managing post-trade processing and data management projects for global clients. Initially he will be responsible for managing the back-office transformation programme at an unnamed European bank.
Most capital markets firms are still not using big data and even those that do often lack a concerted strategy, according to a new report commissioned by Thomson Reuters.
The rising volume of market data is comparable to the Cambrian Explosion in which the number of species on Earth dramatically increased around 542 million years ago. Banks will have to adjust to this deluge of data if they are to keep pace with aggressive new competitors.
New intraday liquidity reporting tools set out by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision could pose a serious challenge for banks, according to a new white paper by Swift.
Bloomberg Vault has introduced File Analytics, a hybrid cloud-based service that enables firms to “identify, categorise, track and manage” unstructured data held in corporate files and documents.
Depending on who you speak to, the definition of a data scientist seems to mean different things to different people. Some see it as a glorified number crunching role, others believe the position requires someone more inquisitive to spot and respond to key trends.
The explosion of data in the securities and capital markets industry – more than 30% CAGR – is rapidly becoming a problem for market participants and managing that challenge will require a disciplined approach to the development of new data architectures.
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.
Tullett Prebon has launched an aggregated swap data repositories data feed for the interest rate swaps market, aiming to increase price transparency in accordance with the Dodd-Frank Act.
Shifting settlement cycles, the rise of big data, global regulation and increasing demand for post-trade services are creating both challenges and opportunities that global exchanges would do well to face wisely, according to Lars Ottersgard, head of market technology and Eva Saidac, head of business development market technology at Nasdaq OMX.
Citi has launched a new set of trading features and transaction cost analysis tools on its Citi Futures and Options Execution platform, which it says will help clients to gain clarity from their futures clearing merchants.
Nasdaq OMX has launched a new business intelligence service called MiQ, which it says will help its regional exchange, clearinghouse and CSD customers to better understand liquidity, market movements, performance and business opportunities.
The capital markets industry continues to be amongst the top data driven industries. Electronic trading generates millions of market messages during a given day. With diminishing returns in high-frequency trading, focus has shifted from high-speed trading to looking for patterns in large volumes of market data for financial information and use cases.
Citi has launched an electronic block pricing tool via the Bloomberg App Portal, marking the first time a major tier one broker has ever used the Portal to deploy an application around the world.
New regulations requiring financial institutions to increase the amount of data fields they have on their customer records and swingeing fines imposed when processes and data are found to be inadequate have triggered an increased focus on data governance.
Trading firms are still struggling with the Dodd-Frank requirement for certain swaps to be traded on registered Swap Execution Facilities. According to a survey conducted by trading communications vendor IPC Systems, 60% of survey respondents said the industry as a whole was behind on meeting the deadlines on SEF trading, though only 39% said their […]
What is the latest technological snag affecting high-speed trading performance? In a word, jitter – a major risk, particularly when carrying out arbitrage.
Global standards and approaches to regulation need to focus more on removing risk from the financial system rather than on compliance – but to do so international regulators will need to harmonise their efforts and embrace technology to a much greater degree.
Until the world has a definitive Legal Entity Identifier, we are going to have to recognise that piecemeal adoption brings with it significant hidden costs in validating, enriching and mapping for regulatory purposes. If the total number of registered market participants is meant to include all the corporates that trade FX forwards, we are far short.
MasterCard has partnered with mobile technology specialist Syniverse under an audacious plan that aims at nothing less than “bringing mobile financial services to every single mobile user on the planet”.
What do taxis, the weather, mobile wallets and raincoats have in common? They are all potential variables in determining a person’s daily spend – and they provide a great opportunity for banks to use data to save customers money, according to Aman Narain, global head of digital banking Singapore at Standard Chartered.
As data volumes continue to grow, being able to make greater use of the information enhances competitive advantage. The financial services industry is taking steps towards using predictive analytics technology to do just that.
Industry standards organisation the FIX Trading Community has published its guidelines for transaction cost analysis in equities, which it says will help to create a better market by clearing up the competing methodologies and definitions that are currently in use.
In the wake of scandals involving manipulation of market indices, can statistical learning theory be used to detect and fix anomalies in Libor and other market indices?
