SteelEye report finds surge in demand for integrated surveillance amid regulatory crackdown

Compliance technology and data analytics firm SteelEye found that demand for integrated trade and communications surveillance has increased by 100% this year following heightened regulatory scrutiny due to high-profile fines issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Conduct Authority.

Integrated surveillance refers to the ability to combine, monitor, and analyze structured and unstructured data across trades, orders, communications, and contextual sources such as news and market data. Doing so can uncover risks that go unnoticed when trade and communications surveillance systems are siloed, and can enable firms to carry out trade reconstructions without missing the regulatory deadline.

The increased demand for integrated surveillance comes amid a marked spike in regulatory scrutiny of market manipulation rules, specifically around communications and trade surveillance. Over the past two years, regulators have increased the number and penalty cost of enforcement actions, in line with a perceived increase of regulatory violations. Earlier this year, Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s division of enforcement said that while there was no expectation to break new records for fines issued each year, there was an expectation that behavior would change.

According to SteelEye’s 2023 Annual Compliance Health Check Report, which surveyed more than 300 senior financial services compliance and risk professionals, integrated surveillance is now a key investment area for over a quarter of financial firms (26%), compared to 13% in 2022.

Clear Street to launch investment banking business

New York-based prime broker Clear Street announced that it intends to launch an investment banking business following the hiring of several experienced investment bankers.

As well as the investment banking development, Clear Street will also begin providing strategic advisory services to emerging growth companies, pending regulatory approval.

Adaptive’s Aeron now available on Google Cloud marketplace

Adaptive Financial Consulting, a London-based consultancy, has announced that its Aeron Premium technology is available on the Google Cloud Marketplace, providing customers with components to accelerate and differentiate cloud-native systems and trading infrastructure.

Aeron, which was created by low-latency software trading tech company Real Logic before its acquisition by Adaptive last year, is used by firms to build high-performance trading systems.

You can read more about Aeron and Adaptive here.

Depósito Central de Valores leverages Nasdaq tech to digitize securities

Depósito Central de Valores (DCV), the Central Securities Depository of Chile, has announced that it has expanded its capabilities to support digitized securities as part of its technology partnership with Nasdaq.

The technology leverages digital asset capabilities developed by Nasdaq, and has been fully integrated with the DCV’s central security depository solution, DCV Evolución. The effect of the digitization will reduce the firm’s reliance on manual processing, as well as reduce settlement times.

While the DCV will initially be launching digitized securities on a private database, Nasdaq’s technology is also DLT-enabled to support the issuance, registry and settlement of tokenized assets as the broader ecosystem evolves.

Accelex launches private debt and securities solution

Accelex, a London-based content extraction technology provider that specializes in extracting data from PDF documents for private markets investments, has expanded its product line with an automated private debt and securities extraction solution. The new solution, marketed at institutional investors and asset servicers, allows investors in private market funds to streamline data extraction for investments across multiple funding rounds and multiple levels of capital structure.

Accelex currently uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to allow users to classify documents while extracting actionable information quickly, accurately and securely. The platform also offers an audit trail while mapping instrument metrics to reference data, which provides a consistent time series of securities performance throught an entire investment portfolio.

DSB publishes 2023 OTC Isin Consultation Report

The Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB), a source of reference data for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, has published its 2023 Industry Consultation Final Report in relation to the provision of OTC International Securities Identification Number (Isin) and Classification Financial Instrument code (CFI) services.

The report allows stakeholders and market participants to provide feedback to the DSB on topics of interest. This edition outlines details on support for increasing the cost of search-only user fees in order to reflect the larger infrastructure and costs required for ongoing API functionality.

The DSB is a subsidiary of the Association of National Numbering Agencies and was established to meet specific operational and regulatory requirements of the OTC derivatives markets.