This Week: OpenFin rebrands as Here; new US stock exchange; Tradeweb; Snowflake & more

OpenFin now called Here, unveils browser-based interoperability platform

Interoperability vendor OpenFin has rebranded itself and will now be called Here. The name change coincides with a new product offering, Enterprise Browser, which brings the vendor’s app interoperability offering out of a desktop container and into the browser.

According to a press release, a firm’s “toggle tax”—the time it takes to retrieve information from different tabs and applications—can cost users about four hours per week in productivity and require people to spend up to two hours a day searching for information in different apps. That “tax” can be exacerbated by the need to rekey information between apps and create significant fat-finger operational risk.

Built on Google Chromium, Enterprise Browser offers customizable, unified Supertabs. These allow users to organize and combine browser and application tabs into dedicated layouts to see information across apps at a glance, mitigating the need for toggling.

It also provides pp interoperability, as apps within Supertabs automatically update, and share data and context, eliminating the need for repeated copy and pasting. Users can also search inside and across all applications within the Enterprise Browser, receive notifications, and it allows admins to authorize approved apps and websites, manage fine-grained app permissions, and receive usage analytics to enable audit, compliance, and vendor management.

“Here is uniquely positioned to win in the enterprise browser space with its established track record in financial services,” said Matt Harris, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, an investor in OpenFin/Here, in the release. “Since leading its Series A, we’ve been impressed by the company’s success in collaborating with the largest banks to meet their needs for productivity, security, and compliance.”

A new US stock exchange to apply for registration later this year

A Dallas-based entity called TXSE Group has announced its plans to launch the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE). The exchange will focus on enabling US and global companies to access US equity capital markets and will provide a venue to trade and list public companies and the growing universe of exchange-traded products. TXSE will be a fully electronic, national securities exchange that will seek registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The group successfully completed its initial capital raise of approximately $120 million with participation from more than two dozen investors, including BlackRock and Citadel Securities. According to its press release, the liquidity providers backing TXSE Group represent a significant portion of the equity volume on US lit exchanges and together comprise a majority of all US listed retail volume. A registration will be submitted to the SEC later this year.

Tradeweb becomes first electronic platform to connect repo and IRS markets

Tradeweb Markets has bridged the firm’s repurchase agreements (repo) and interest rate swap (IRS) product offerings to enhance clients’ execution workflows in these markets.

It becomes the first electronic trading platform to make overnight index swap (OIS) curves available during the repo trade negotiation process, helping institutional clients assess the price competitiveness of different repo rates across different currencies and maturities. These OIS spreads are generated for all GBP, EUR, and USD trades on the Tradeweb repo platform and will reflect the exact term of each repo trade, leveraging off swap curves on the IRS platform. Amid higher money market volatility due to revised expectations of central bank policy actions, traders have been increasingly referencing spreads to OIS curves when evaluating pricing of fixed-rate repos.

In addition, immediately after executing a long-dated fixed-rate repo transaction on Tradeweb, buy-side traders can manage their interest rate exposure in a fully electronic workflow. At the click of a button, they can pre-populate a corresponding OIS ticket with the details of their completed repo trade—including start and end date, direction and cash amount—and send a request-for-quote enquiry to Tradeweb’s extensive network of liquidity providers on its IRS platform.

Snowflake unveils Polaris Catalog

At its annual user conference this week, data cloud vendor Snowflake debuted Polaris Catalog, a vendor-neutral, open catalog implementation for Apache Iceberg—an open standard for implementing data lakehouses, data lakes, and other modern architectures. Polaris Catalog will be open sourced in the next 90 days.

Apache Iceberg emerged from incubation to an Apache Software Foundation project in May 2020. With Polaris Catalog, users can now gain a single, centralized place for any engine to find and access an organization’s Iceberg tables with full, open interoperability. Polaris Catalog relies on Iceberg’s open source REST protocol, which provides an open standard for users to access and retrieve data from any engine that supports the Iceberg Rest API, including Apache Flink, Apache Spark, Dremio, Python, Trino, and more.

Fenergo launches AI-powered client lifecycle management

Fenergo, a provider of digital solutions for know your customer (KYC), client lifecycle management (CLM) and transaction monitoring, has debuted a new AI-powered CLM with the aim of further boosting operational efficiencies, accelerating the onboarding process and improving end-user experiences while reducing costs associated with KYC and AML compliance.   

Scheduled for release later this year, Fenergo’s AI assistant leverages generative AI and natural language processing (NLP) to enable firms to achieve considerable time and cost savings, alleviate workloads and more efficiently manage risk. The introduction of AI to Fenergo’s CLM, which is powered by Amazon Bedrock, looks to allow firms to more accurately identify and mitigate financial crime risk and meet regulatory obligations for KYC, AML, and sanctions measures. It encompasses three separate AI functionalities—scheduled for release between now and Q4—which include intelligent document processing (IDP), advanced reporting, and AI assistant. These new capabilities will automate labor-intensive and time-consuming tasks related to client onboarding, due diligence, and regulatory reporting.

LMAX Group launches FX NDF trading in Singapore and London

LMAX Group, an operator of institutional execution venues for FX and digital assets trading, has launched FX Non-Deliverable Forwards (NDFs), available to trade in two matching centers, Singapore (SG1) and London (LD4). The launch follows the receipt by LMAX Exchange, the Group’s global institutional FX exchange, of a Recognized Market Operator (RMO) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The FX NDFs are traded on a central limit order book (Clob), delivering price discovery and execution to all market participants. Initially targeting Asia-Pacific, the launch supports growing regional demand for FX NDF trading and access to deeper institutional liquidity as well as enhanced FX market structure.

FX NDF trading on LMAX Exchange via Singapore and London will initially offer top Asian USD crosses including Indian Rupee (INR), South Korean Won (KRW), New Taiwan Dollar (TWD), Chinese Yuan (CNY), Indonesian Rupiah (IDR), Philippine Peso (PHP) and Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) with LATAM crosses to follow.

NZ Super Fund selects Northern Trust to provide data warehouse solutions

Northern Trust has expanded its relationship with the New Zealand Superannuation Fund (NZ Super Fund) to provide data services via its Data Warehouse Solutions offering. Northern Trust has provided the NZ Super Fund with global custody and compliance monitoring services since 2007 and securities lending services from 2019. Northern Trust Asset Management has provided investment management services to the sovereign wealth fund since 2014.