This Week: Cboe, Ice, ABN AMRO/Temenos & more

FNZ and Clearstream ink strategic partnership, launch joint solution

Wealth management platform provider FNZ has partnered with Deutsche Börse Group’s post-trade solutions provider, Clearstream.

The two firms have collaborated to launch a new solution that intends to increase transparency in the asset management industry by simplifying the process of understanding investment distribution data and providing managers with the global and regional intelligence they require to analyze market trends, better understand behavior, improve decision-making around fund distribution, and ultimately deliver stronger business, customer and regulatory outcomes.

Through their new strategic partnership, FNZ and Clearstream endeavor to support asset managers with their European fund distribution operations by delivering efficiency gains through Clearstream’s end-to-end fund dealing and custody solution and FNZ’s wealth management platform.

Cboe adds expiry days for SPX Weeklys options, covering every trading day

Cboe has announced that it will list S&P 500 Index (SPX) Weeklys options with Tuesday and Thursday expirations.

The Tuesday expirations will begin on Monday, April 18, and the Thursday expirations will begin on Wednesday, May 11. Currently, Cboe’s SPX Weeklys options include Monday, Wednesday, and Friday expiries.

This announcement expands the product suite to provide expirations every trading day of the week.

SPX Weeklys options are shorter in term than standard monthly SPX options and have weekly expirations.

Ice launches data solution for EU SFDR compliance

Data and market infrastructure provider Intercontinental Exchange (Ice), has launched a data solution for compliance with the European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).

Ice’s new SFDR Principal Adverse Impacts (PAIs) solution intends to help clients meet EU SFDR obligations to identify and disclose sustainable impacts and whether and how each financial product considers enumerated principal adverse impacts, as defined in the technical standards recently adopted by the European Commission. The EU’s PAI regime requires specifically formatted disclosure on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data-related indicators, including emissions, board gender diversity, and energy consumption ratios.

Ice’s new solution provides users with updates for all the mandatory adverse sustainability indicators applicable to investments. The service intends to enable customers to view ESG data through a formatted file or web viewing tool and allows them to link equity and fixed-income securities to the closest disclosing corporate entity.

Ice’s offering works to align data with regulatory technical standards to simplify the process of distributing data for clients.

ABN Amro Bank extends partnership with Temenos

Dutch bank ABN Amro has signed a multi-year subscription extension with Temenos, a global software provider of banking solutions based in Switzerland. The agreement is centered on maintaining the bank’s deployment of the Temenos Banking Cloud.

The extended agreement includes access for the bank’s 22 DevOps teams to Temenos Continuous Deployment as-a-service, which ABN Amro estimates increases the efficiency of its early-stage testing by 30%, daily test pipelines from 1 to 15, and will accelerate test cycles by a factor of 10.

ABN Amro Bank is a long-standing customer of Temenos, running its corporate banking, private banking, and international payments on Temenos’s open platform.

DTCC unveils first prototype to support CBDCs

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has announced the development of the first prototype that intends to explore how a central bank digital currency (CBDC) could operate in the United States’ clearing and settlement infrastructure.

The prototype, known as Project Lithium, has been created to test the ability of the US market infrastructure in supporting a CBDC, using a distributed ledger.

In addition to this, Project Lithium has also been developed to explore how a CBDC could enable atomic settlement, a conditional settlement that occurs if delivery and payment are both received at the same time.

DTCC is developing its Project Lithium pilot in collaboration with the Digital Dollar Project, a non-profit led by former US regulators, technologists, and executives from the consulting firm Accenture, which supplied DTCC with the initial funding.

Alliance Global Partners extends partnership with QUODD

Market data services provider QUODD,  has extended its partnership with Alliance Global Partners, a provider of wealth management, institutional, and corporate services.

Alliance Global Partners will continue to deploy QUODD’s market data workstation, Equity+, which provides users with access to market data with multi-asset class securities pricing.

In a change to the way that AGP implements the platform, Equity+ will now be offered to all current advisors and as a core component to all new advisors joining the firm.

RBR and Aite-Novarica Group announce intent to merge

RBR, a provider of research and data on retail technology and banking, cards, and payments, and Aite-Novarica, and advisory firm providing insights on technology, regulations, markets, and operations to banks, payments providers, insurers, and securities firms, have announced their intent to merge.

The leadership teams of both consultancy firms are working together to offer clients new insights but will continue to offer their entire suite of reports, subscriptions, data services, bespoke research, consulting, and conferences.

Both RBR and Aite-Novarica will continue to operate as independent organizations, pending a comprehensive branding review. The upcoming combined company will be jointly headquartered in Boston and London.

FIS partners with Fireblocks to accelerate crypto adoption

Financial technology solutions provider FIS is partnering with Fireblocks, a digital asset transfer and settlement platform, to encourage the adoption of crypto within the capital markets. This follows FIS’s recent announcement that it had launched new crypto regulation capabilities.

Through the partnership, FIS is intending to give firms of all types access crypto trading venues, liquidity providers, lending desks, and decentralized finance applications. FIS is hoping to reach institutional investors who are considering adopting digital assets as part of their investment portfolios.

Through the Fireblocks platform, FIS capital markets clients could move, store, and issue digital assets.

FIS is continuing to expand its portfolio of crypto and digital asset offerings, including card-to-crypto and other money movement services for cryptocurrency changes.

T. Rowe Price opts for Clearwater to support insurance clients

Investment manager T. Rowe Price has selected Clearwater Analytics, a provider of SaaS-based investment accounting, reporting, and analytics solutions, to support its insurance clients.

From the partnership, T. Rowe Price clients will receive direct connections with their book of records, book/adjusted carrying value calculations, and enhanced global regulatory support. Using Clearwater, T. Rowe Price’s internal teams gain leverage in managing portfolios and reporting on client assets. The T. Rowe Price team will be supported by Clearwater’s strategic accounts team, which includes accounting and reporting subject matter experts.

Current and prospective T. Rowe Price clients can expect to be onboarded to the platform over the coming months.

DSB publishes final report from UPI Legal Terms and Conditions Consultation

The Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB), founded by the Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) to facilitate the allocation and maintenance of various identifiers for OTC derivatives, and subsequently designated by the FSB as the sole Unique Product Identifier (UPI) service provider to facilitate creation and distribution of UPIs globally, has published the UPI Legal Terms and Conditions Consultation final report and draft user legal documentation.

The UPI is designed to facilitate effective aggregation of OTC derivatives transaction reports. Once mandates come into effect in Africa, APAC, Europe, and the Americas, reporting parties will be mandated to incorporate the UPI into their workflows and submit these to trade repositories.

The newly published final report focuses on summarizing the industry feedback received from the consultation paper on the DSB legal terms and conditions. The report confirms the legal provisions and associated mechanisms to be taken forward with regards to DSB legal documentation.

Glue42 and Singletrack partner for advisory

Capital markets analytics platform Singletrack has partnered Glue42, a desktop application interoperability provider, with the intention of offering sell-side clients and end-users improved client experiences by integrating its analytics platform with Glue42’s desktop integration platform.

The integration will be achieved using the Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium (FDC3) standard. Through this partnership, Singletrack and Glue42 will embed CRM and analytics into user workflows to develop a more personalized experience for clients.

Users will be able to access client and research data within a single click as part of their end-to-end workflows. As a result, they will be able to quickly understand client interests, needs and history,

Glue42 and Singletrack are currently in client discussions.