Johannesburg Stock Exchange Expands Colo 2.0 Service with Beeks and IPC Support

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) is advancing its Colo 2.0 service through an extended collaboration with Beeks Group and IPC. In response to rising demand for dual-location disaster recovery solutions, Beeks’ Exchange Cloud service has now been deployed at Teraco’s secondary data centre, aiming to strengthen the JSE’s resilience, ensuring robust infrastructure for the future.

The Colo 2.0 service, launched in September 2023, has quickly become a vital component of the JSE’s operations, offering private cloud computing and low-latency analytics. The strong adoption of this service led to the need for a secondary solution to support growth and disaster recovery. The expansion at Teraco reflects the successful partnership between the JSE, Beeks, and IPC, highlighting a shared commitment to future-proofing financial market infrastructure. The collaboration aims to extend these cloud-based solutions to other exchanges globally.

Baton Systems Launches Advanced Treasury Management Tools for Real-Time Intraday Liquidity Optimisation

Baton Systems, the global capital markets technology provider, has introduced new treasury management tools designed to enhance intraday liquidity management, reduce buffers, and mitigate real-time risk. The tools are designed to help firms to lower financing costs, address increasing regulatory scrutiny, and better navigate volatile market conditions.

Baton’s latest offering provides treasury managers with a real-time dashboard that offers comprehensive insights into liquidity sources across all business lines, enabling improved decision-making and strategy adjustments. By integrating real-time data with historical models, the solution helps predict liquidity demands, optimise payment sequencing, and detect market or counterparty risks. Additionally, stress testing capabilities allow firms to assess liquidity resilience under various scenarios. The new tools are seamlessly integrated with Baton’s Core-Payments platform.

QUODD Partners with Infosel to Enhance Market Data Solutions in Latin America

On-demand market data provider QUODD has partnered with Latin American investment intelligence fintech Infosel, to integrate QUODD’s QX Marketplace content into Infosel’s market data platform, enhancing the analytics and insights available to financial institutions across Mexico and Latin America.

Infosel now leverages QUODD’s comprehensive market data to support banks, investment advisors, and traders through both its platform and customisable white-label solutions. QUODD’s extensive market data includes global equities, fixed income, indices, and mutual fund pricing, while Infosel delivers financial analytics and insights. The collaboration aims to strengthen both companies’ positions in the region’s financial technology landscape.

Eventus Partners with ANCORD to Offer Validus Trade Surveillance Platform to Brazilian Brokers

Eventus, the trade surveillance and financial risk solutions vendor, has entered a partnership with ANCORD, Brazil’s National Association of Securities, Foreign Exchange and Commodities Brokers and Dealers. Through the collaboration, Eventus’ Validus platform will be accessible to ANCORD members, enabling them to implement a comprehensive trade surveillance solution tailored to their specific needs.

The partnership follows BSM’s recent mandate requiring Brazilian brokerages to independently monitor trading activities to detect regulatory infractions such as insider trading and spoofing. Validus offers extensive automation and adaptability to meet these new guidelines and cope with regulatory changes and data surges.

Eventus CEO Travis Schwab commented: “Brazil has long been focused on protecting investors and ensuring that firms prevent, detect and root out bad behaviour. Our Validus platform is proven in many of the most demanding trading environments globally, and brokers in Brazil can now tap into our expertise and high-performance technology to not only meet regulatory requirements but bring significant efficiencies to their compliance programs.”

Eventus boasts a client retention rate close to 100% and serves a diverse range of clients globally, including Tier 1 banks, brokers, and regulatory bodies.

S&P Global and Accenture Collaborate to Advance GenAI in Financial Services

S&P Global and Accenture have announced a strategic collaboration to drive generative AI (GenAI) innovation within the financial services sector. Central to this partnership is a comprehensive gen AI learning program, set to launch in August, aimed at equipping S&P Global’s 35,000 employees with essential AI skills. The program will utilise Accenture LearnVantage services, offering tailored content to enhance AI fluency across the workforce and meet the industry’s evolving talent needs.

In addition to the learning initiative, the collaboration will enhance AI development and benchmarking within the financial services industry. By integrating Accenture’s Foundation Model Services with S&P AI Benchmarks by Kensho, the partnership will provide financial firms with advanced tools to manage, scale, and evaluate large language models (LLMs). This initiative will allow banks, insurers, and capital markets firms to improve their AI solutions’ performance and efficacy, while maintaining responsible AI practices.

ICE Bonds and MarketAxess to Connect Liquidity Networks for Enhanced Fixed Income Trading

ICE Bonds, a division of Intercontinental Exchange, and fixed-income electronic trading platform operator MarketAxess Holdings Inc., are collaborating to integrate their liquidity networks. The partnership aims to boost efficiency and access to deeper liquidity in the fixed income markets, for the benefit of both the institutional and wealth management sectors.

The integration, establishing connectivity between ICE Bonds’ automated trading system, ICE TMC, and MarketAxess’ Open Trading network, is designed to expand the reach and depth of liquidity pools for each company’s global user bases, promoting enhanced price transparency and best execution. By combining ICE Bonds’ strength in retail brokerage and wealth management with MarketAxess’ dominance in institutional trading, the collaboration seeks to improve overall market liquidity and trading outcomes for all participants.

Taskize Launches Mailbox Analyser to Track and Quantify Email Impact in Post-Trade Operations

Taskize has introduced Mailbox Analyser, a new tool designed to track and quantify the impact of email communication in post-trade operations. Given the substantial volume of emails handled by custodian banks—often exceeding a million annually—the new tool addresses the challenges posed by high email traffic, such as errors and auditing difficulties.

Mailbox Analyser helps firms understand their email usage by identifying the types of client enquiries and clients that generate the most emails, and by offering insights into resolution times and efficiency. Integrated with the Taskize platform, it monitors email traffic and automatically generates detailed analytics on activity levels, resolution times, staff performance, and query trends. This data can help banks to allocate resources more effectively, improve client satisfaction, and enhance the efficiency and compliance of their communication processes.

tanX Achieves $1 Billion Quarterly Spot Trading Volume

Dubai-based digital asset trading platform tanX reported a significant milestone in Q2 2024, processing $1 billion in spot trading volume across 3 million transactions, reflecting a 70% increase from the previous quarter. The platform’s success is set against a backdrop of rising interest in decentralised trading solutions, particularly in the wake of FTX’s collapse, which has driven traders towards non-custodial and safer methods of executing trades and storing assets.

tanX, operating as a decentralised exchange (DEX) on Ethereum, emphasises compliance, regulation, and transparency, catering to institutional clients through specialised liquidity lines. tanX bridges the two models of decentralised and centralised exchanges (CEXs), allowing CEXs to integrate its non-custodial trading solutions while maintaining their existing user experience, underscoring the platform’s innovative approach in a regulatory stringent environment.

Baton Systems Adds JSCC to CCP Network

Baton Systems has achieved successful bi-directional integration with the Japanese Securities Clearing Corporation (JSCC) via its Core-Collateral ecosystem. The integration allows JSCC’s Clearing Member clients to directly access APAC’s largest central counterparty (CCP), enhancing efficiency by providing normalised data and real-time balance updates. The addition of JSCC complements existing integrations, including SGX, expanding Baton’s network to thirteen CCPs, handling 95% of global initial margin.

Baton’s Core-Collateral platform automates the movement of cash and securities, offering users consolidated and real-time updates on margin requirements and collateral eligibility. The integration of collateral eligibility data into Baton’s API further streamlines the management process by enabling automated, real-time determinations of eligible assets. This reducing operational burdens, improving decision-making, and enhancing financial efficiency and net interest income for firms, according to the company.

Tucker Dona, Head of Business Development and Client Success at Baton Systems, commented: “The addition of JSCC to the Baton Core-Collateral ecosystem is a big step to increasing access to the most strategically important CCPs for our clients. As a result, we are able to assist more FCMs and Clearing Members globally to automate and optimise a significant proportion of their collateral holdings. This is incredibly important in helping these firms reduce dependency on manual processes and optimise collateral management at a time when market volatility and a higher interest rate environment place growing pressure on the margin posting process.”

valantic FSA Partners with Nasdaq to Develop Nasdaq Rates Trader for Nordic and Baltic Markets

valantic FSA, the electronic trading and automation solutions provider, has announced a partnership with Nasdaq to develop Nasdaq Rates Trader, a new web-based user interface for Nasdaq’s Nordic and Baltic fixed income markets. The interface will offer access to Nasdaq’s data and trading functionalities through a modern and intuitive front-end.

Key features include advanced data visualisation and customisable workspaces. The beta testing phase for the new UI is scheduled to begin in February 2025, with a full launch planned for October 2025.