This Week: FIS/Microsoft, Bloomberg/MSCI, Higo/Tora, & more

FIS’s banking platform launches on Microsoft Azure

FIS’s cloud-native banking solution, Modern Banking Platform, is now available on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The offering intends to expand digital online banking to markets including the UK, Thailand, and New Zealand.

Now running on Azure, Modern Banking assists banks in designing, building, and deploying new products and services. The platform uses application programming interface (API) capabilities and artificial intelligence to provide financial institutions with real-time insights and operational analytics.

Last year, Microsoft expanded its payments relationship with Worldpay from FIS in Latin America to allow payment processing in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

Bloomberg and MSCI jointly launch Paris-aligned index offering

Bloomberg has partnered with MSCI, a portfolio and risk analytics provider, to launch the first indices in their joint climate benchmark offering with the Bloomberg MSCI Global, Euro, and US Corporate Paris-Aligned Indices.

These indices have been developed to serve as benchmarks for investors to assess the performance of corporate bond holdings that seek to meet or exceed the minimum standards of the EU Paris-Aligned Benchmark (PAB) label. The offering combines Bloomberg’s fixed-income indices with MSCI’s climate data, research, and analytics for investment-grade and fixed-rate corporate bonds.

To ensure they meet the minimum PAB criteria, each index sets an initial 50% reduction of absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) relative to the standard Bloomberg parent (Euro, US, or global) corporate index, followed by an annual 7.5% decarbonization relative to the baseline emissions. These emissions reductions are achieved by excluding the largest GHG emitting companies.

The indices use an exclusions-based approach to achieve the required decarbonization trajectory. The monthly exclusions process will establish the emissions threshold required to maintain compliance with the PAB label decarbonization trajectory for the following month.

Higo Bank switches to Tora’s EMS

Japanese regional bank Higo has deployed Tora’s execution management system (EMS) in a bid to upgrade its electronic trading operations.

Tora, a buy-side OEMS and portfolio management system provider recently acquired by the London Stock Exchange Group, intends to provide Higo with trade management and position monitoring tools as well as a compliance engine set up for Japanese market regulation requirements.

Tora’s EMS enables Higo traders to monitor their trading activities and document the trading history of each stock on a real-time basis and provides them with access to a network of domestic and foreign brokers and venues.

Higo has stated that it was keen to invest in a hosted environment platform to reduce initial IT cost overhead, and that it sought a system that had the flexibility to integrate execution dataflows with its existing middle- and back-office workflows to provide necessary regulatory functions.

Valantic FSA invests in low-code specialist Velox

Valantic Financial Services Automation (FSA), a provider of cross-asset electronic trading and automation solutions, has completed a strategic investment in Velox Financial Technology, a fintech specializing in low-code software development tools for capital markets institutions to accelerate their digitalization initiatives.

Valantic FSA’s investment will deepen the strategic technology partnership with Velox, allowing it to bring new products to market quicker and drive further development in its new client solutions business.

The pair’s partnership began in 2021 and recently culminated in the launch of the first phase of Valantic FSA’s repo trading platform, based on HTML5 technology and open integration for data visualization within the application.

Financière de l’Arc extends partnership with NeoXam for cloud push

French asset manager Financière de l’Arc has extended the scope of its current relationship with buy-side software provider NeoXam and has subscribed to NeoXam-as-a-Service’s offering to host and manage its current NeoXam portfolio management system.

The partnership originally began in 2011 after Financière de l’Arc chose NeoXam PMS as its core system for order management, position-keeping, compliance and net asset value validation. This move to fully outsourced systems is part of a more global strategy taken by the asset manager recently for its entire IT infrastructure.

After an initial proof-of-concept to assess an infrastructure-free, secured connectivity to NeoXam PMS, Financière de l’Arc decided to commit to a long-term agreement, guaranteeing operational stability and data security.

South African insurer adopts SS&C Chorus for digital transformation

Old Mutual Limited, a South African life insurer, has extended its relationship with SS&C by adopting SS&C Chorus BPM,  a cloud-based digital process automation and analytics solution for Old Mutual Corporate, which is Old Mutual Limited’s business serving institutional customers.

SS&C has been partnered with Old Mutual for 30 years. The recent extension of the firms’ relationship sees Old Mutual move its server-based work solution that SS&C had previously supported to SS&C’s new cloud-based workflow solution, Chorus.

SS&C Chorus leverages machine learning, robotic process automation and natural language processing to help customers transform and manage their business processes at scale. The solution is available via SS&C’s secure private cloud, on-premise and through public cloud offerings.