Ascent Works with FCA to Simplify Regulatory Handbook

US-based RegTech provider Ascent has formalized its collaboration with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to break down the agency’s regulatory handbook into smaller and more digestible pieces for ease of consumption.

The partnership is designed to make it easier for financial institutions to understand and apply the FCA guidelines to their operations. Ascent will use its expertise in AI, machine learning and natural language processing to convert the FCA text into distinct workable tasks.

Chinese Official Urges RegTech Investment

Lu Lei, Deputy Director of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, has stressed the need for greater investment in regtech to support new market developments. “In the blockchain and the internet core high-frequency trading market, the past era of conducting regular off-site inspection and on-site inspection based on financial statements’ statistics implemented by the traditional financial institutions with single business are over,” he said at the 8th Asia-Pacific Forum on Economy and Finance. “This puts the urgency of real-time regulation on the agenda, and at the same time, implementing real-time regulation will also require payment systems and regtech to support.”

DLT to Help Regulators

Applications such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) can help to effectively regulate the derivatives markets, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo. He noted that DLT could be used to automate certain regulatory processes, which he described as “quantitative regulation.”

“We can… envision the day where rulebooks are digitized, compliance is increasingly automated or built into business operations through smart contracts, and regulatory reporting is satisfied through real-time DLT networks,” he said. “The machines here at the CFTC would have the ability to communicate regulatory requirements and consume and analyse the data that comes in through such systems.”

Calastone Shifts to Blockchain

London-based fintech firm Calastone, which provides back and middle-office services to over 1,700 clients including JP Morgan Asset Management and Schroders, has shifted its entire trading system to blockchain – including more than 9 million monthly e-communications. “The more you can automate, the more you de-risk, you more you streamline, the more you speed up,” said Andrew Tomlinson, chief marketing officer at Calastone.

Positive Progress, Says Powell

Progress has been made around the world on financial regulation, according to US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. In a recent speech he noted that regulation has become stricter and more transparent, but warned that further adjustments could be on the horizon. “In the financial stability realm, the case for enhanced transparency is not just about being accountable; it is also about providing credible information,” he said. “[Stress tests] have placed special demands on transparency and accountability… The framework is still evolving, and we will need to be open to making changes.”

big xyt adds MiFID II Liquidity Dashboards to Liquidity Cockpit

big xyt has added dashboards to its Liquidity Cockpit that are designed to support discovery of high-quality liquidity within the MiFID II landscape. Users can view and compare reported systematic internaliser (SI) volumes, which can then be filtered by adjusted conditions or analysed by time, region or symbol. This facilitates comparisons with other market activity such as Large-in-Scale (LIS) trades and the impact of Double Volume Caps (DVCs) on liquidity dispersion over time.

Moscow Exchange Partners Integral

Moscow Exchange (MOEX) and FX specialist Integral have partnered to provide exchange customers with access to better liquidity, higher performance and lower latency. The improvements are based on the use of Integral’s Open Currency Exchange (OCX) and also include better pricing, lower risk and faster acknowledgement. On its part, MOEX will provide liquidity to the Integral network.

Altair Acquires Datawatch

Simulation technologies provider Altair has acquired data intelligence specialist Datawatch – along with its Panopticon visualization platform – for $176 million in cash. The move is aimed at bolstering Altair’s offerings in the generic data science and analytics segment, where Datawatch has strong offerings in data prep, data prediction, and real-time high-volume data visualisation. For capital markets users, Datawatch is probably best known for its Panopticon suite of visualisation tools. Datawatch acquired Panopticon Software in August 2013, and recently made Panopticon Streams widely available to Datawatch clients.

RavenPack and CloudQuant Team Up

Machine-readable news platform provider RavenPack has granted access to its historical data to crowd researchers seeking alpha signals on CloudQuant’s online Python and JupyterLab-based tools. The initiative aims to support data scientists designing tools to improve financial modelling.

Abacus Group Acquires Hedgepoint Solutions

Abacus Group, a provider of hosting services for the hedge fund marketplace, has acquired Hedgepoint Solutions, a New York-based IT consulting firm that targets hedge funds, venture capital and private equity firms. As a result, Hedgepoint clients will benefit from the wide variety of features included in the Abacus Cloud platform, such as off-site data centres and a flexible, secure cloud.