This Week: Bloomberg; Charles River, DTCC, SmartStream & More

Bloomberg launches bond trading platform

Bloomberg has announced the launch of Bloomberg Bridge, a new service that intends to support intermediated trading for corporate and emerging market bonds.

Bloomberg Bridge has been scheduled to go live firstly in Europe in Q2 2022, and thereafter in the United States and the Asia Pacific. Bloomberg Bridge has been designed with the aim of offering users the ability to source a pool of liquidity from Bloomberg’s network of investors and dealer firms.

The service intends to allow clients to launch request for quote tickets for applicable securities or respond to an RFQ to seamlessly execute a trade, supported by dedicated Goldman Sachs intermediation desks.

Charles River launches portfolio customization solution

Charles River Development has launched Tailored Portfolio Solutions, an offering that intends to enable both wealth managers and asset managers to provide customized portfolios at scale. The solution integrates the Axioma Portfolio OptimizerTM from index and analytics provider Qontigo.

The integrated solution aims to provide managers with the technology capabilities to tailor portfolios that consider each individual investor’s unique tax circumstance, risk appetite, and ESG values across asset classes and investment styles.

DTCC launches post-trade data analytics service

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation has announced the launch of its Institutional Trade Processing service, titled ITP Data Analytics. The new service includes analytical tools that intend to enable broker-dealers and investment managers to measure and compare their operational performance against counterparties, industry standards, and peers.

ITP Data Analytics, which replaces DTCC’s legacy Benchmarks service, works by consuming underlying daily transaction activity from CTM, DTCC’s post-trade central matching service. The data can then be aggregated and analyzed across multiple metrics and dimensions. The intention here is to provide clients with insights on operational performance across asset classes as well as comparisons to industry averages, counterparty timeliness, and efficiency. The data is displayed on a graphical dashboard that aims to provide customizable functionalities, and the reports are available for direct download.

The offering intends to provide metrics and analyses on data points in hopes to assist firms in preparations for the proposed move in the U.S. to a T+1 settlement cycle, and in the prevention of failed trade penalties under regulations such as Europe’s Central Securities Depositories Regulation.

SmartStream looks to provide accurate regulatory reporting for MiFID II

SmartStream, a provider of transaction management solutions, has announced the launch of a new product that combines reference data with reconciliations. The Transaction Reporting Reconciliation and Reporting Decision Control offering intends to provide disclosure capabilities for the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid II). 

The product has been developed to help financial firms demonstrate to regulators the accuracy of their transaction reporting process. The product utilizes SmartStream Air to manage complex forms of data in the cloud and the data structures that can be found in financial institutions’ source systems.

The new product merges SmartStream’s Air with SmartStream’s RDU’s API, which has been developed to allow firms to validate whether a financial instrument is traded on a trading venue and therefore reportable.

Broadridge’s LTX completes integration with Charles River Development

Broadridge Financial Solutions has integrated its AI-driven digital trading platform with the Charles River Investment Management Solution. The complete integration intends to enable users of Charles River’s order and execution management system access to aggregated liquidity and leverage transparency and price discovery within their existing workflows through their existing relationships with their dealers.

Building on Broadridge’s fixed income processing platform, the LTX e-trading platform aims to utilize data science and its own patented trading protocol, RFX, to provide the buy side and sell side with a more complete view into pre-trade and post-trade liquidity. The intention is to help market participants facilitate natural liquidity discovery and achieve best execution.

Six to partner with LMAX Group

Six and LMAX Group have partnered to launch cash-settled, centrally cleared crypto-asset futures.

The launch, which has been scheduled for Q3 2022 pending regulatory approval, intends to initially include centrally cleared US dollar-settled Bitcoin and Ethereum futures, trading 23 hours, five days a week, with the full product roll out to then be extended to 24/7 trading.

Trading Technologies acquires RCM-X

Trading Technologies has acquired RCM-X, a provider of algorithmic execution strategies and quantitative trading products.

The agreement represents the company’s first acquisition since TT was acquired by 7RIDGE in December 2021, when the technology firm announced plans to grow the organization organically and through acquisitions. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Trading Technologies and KRM22 announce first products

Trading Technologies and KRM22 have announced the first two KRM22 risk offerings that TT now integrating into the TT platform. The companies made the announcement at the start of the 2022 International Futures Industry Conference in Boca Raton, Florida.

In the second quarter, TT hopes to launch KRM22 Limits Manager, a limit management system designed by KRM22 that intends to combat pre-trade risk processes by automating, maintaining, and tracking trading limits within an application within the TT Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.

The other new offering, which has been scheduled to launch in the third quarter, will be KRM22 Risk Manager, a post-trade risk service that aims to enhance the risk toolset available on the TT platform.

Volante Technologies launches service for ISO 20022 payments modernization

Volante Technologies has announced the launch of the Volante ISO 20022 Service. This service intends to simplify the complexity of ISO 20022 modernization for any organization involved in the processing of payment messages, from banks and financial institutions to payment service providers .

The Volante ISO 20022 Service aims to enable financial services developers and architects to address the challenges they may face by incorporating ISO 20022 modernization capabilities into their applications. The service, which has been built-on Volante’s low-code technology, contains microservices-based APIs to drive the initiation, transformation, and translation of ISO 20022 messages to and from legacy formats.

For all deployment models, Volante aims to offer a free cloud sandbox that intends to let customers test the catalog of ready-to-consume APIs before using them in - production applications.

CQG launches new trading and analytics platform

Financial software vendor CQG has announced the phased roll-out of its newest trading platform, CQG One. The new cloud-based platform combines the firm’s retail-oriented CQG Desktop platform with the market data, charting, visualization, and advanced analytics features of CQG Integrated Client, its flagship professional trading platform.

CQG One has been scheduled to launch later this year. CQG is aiming to make the new offering available through traders’ futures commission merchants beginning in April.

The new platform will include functionality such as single-click trade entry and portfolio sharing.

Banks collaborate for syndicated loans start-up

JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citi, and Credit Suisse have founded a syndicated loan platform called Versana. Versana is planning to bring together banks, institutional lenders and service providers to bring transparency, efficiency and velocity to this market.

The Versana platform, which has been scheduled to launch later this year, aims to reduce the corporate loan market’s operational challenges by digitally capturing agent banks’ reference data directly from its source on a real-time basis.