This Week: Delta Capita/SSimple, BNY Mellon, DTCC, Broadridge, and more

SSImple and Delta Capita partner on DLT solution for post-trade SSI management 

Delta Capita, a capital markets consulting, managed services, and technology provider, has tapped SSimple, a post-trade distributed ledger technology (DLT) solution automating standing settlement instruction (SSI) management. Delta Capita announced a similar partnership with Xceptor, a data automation platform, for a digitized reconciliations earlier this month.

The consulting firm says the two partnerships, which automate complementary post-trade operations, will round-out Delta Capita’s post-trade offerings as it helps clients move to T+1. The solution from SSimple joins a growing trend using DLT to increase efficiency in post-trade operations.

SSIs, or standing settlement instructions, are agreed-upon instructions for how and where a trade should settle. They refer to a set of data points such as the custodian  bank, account number, investor ID, or beneficiary account details in a trade. Several studies have found that SSI errors account for a significant proportion of failed trades.

Currently, many in the industry use PDFs to manually send SSIs. A PDF can be sent to tens of counterparties, which each process it manually. “There’ll probably be a processing error at some point in one of those,” says Bill Meenaghan, founder and CEO of SSimple. He adds that only about six or seven custodians have automated SSIs so far, and only for a small portion of their clients. SSimple is aiming to work with custodians to automate SSIs for all their clients.

SSimple is creating an open-permissioned industry SSI repository. Instead of sending SSIs as PDFs, custodians can upload SSI data to the distributed ledger and then permission the data for specific clients. The software contains tools for complying with industry standards rules based on Place of Settlement (PSET) and security type and allows users to add SSIs using a graphical user interface, Excel upload, or API.

SSIs vary across markets and counterparties. “Normally within a country for an account,” says Meenaghan, “there’ll be a sub-custodian where [the investment managers] settle the transactions. But that won’t be the same across all their accounts. If it’s State Street, they may settle into Deutsche Bank in Germany, but another one may settle into DekaBank in Germany. … The underlying settlement piece is different for every account.”

As for DLT in post-trade processing, both Karan Kapoor, global head of regulatory and risk consulting at Delta Capita, and Meenaghan say it’s likely the future.

“Although DLT and blockchain will not solve immediate problems overnight … there’s an ongoing push towards the concepts of tokenization, the concepts of purely digital assets, that we are not going to get away from and that is the future of post trade eventually,” says Kapoor. “It’s not a three-to-five-year thing, it’s more a seven-to-eight-to-ten year thing,” but firms should start preparing now, he adds.

Using DLT, Meenaghan says, “[SSimple] can preserve [SSIs] almost like a directory. If you’re going to settle in this account and with this custodian on this chain, we could be the point where you go and check if [the security] is available. Do you have the security and, if you do, which market is it in—or, will it be in—[and] what chain is it on?”

As for post-trade processing, this means users “can then put a mark on [a security] and say, ‘Right, this one’s being sold, you can’t use it for anything else,’ and then on the other side, the cash [can be] blocked … so that you can then affect the settlement, and [eventually] get to T+0.”

For now, though, “the only thing we know is that the industry will have to work together to get to T+1,” Kapoor says.

DTCC to acquire blockchain fintech Securrency

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has signed an agreement to acquire Securrency, a start-up developer of institutional-grade, digital asset infrastructure. The acquisition is expected to close in the coming weeks and will position DTCC to encourage adoption of digital assets.

Securrency will become a subsidiary of the clearinghouse under the name DTCC Digital Assets. Securrency CEO Nadine Chakar will become the managing director and global head of DTCC Digital Assets. Around 100 other Securrency staff, including both co-founders, will join DTCC.

DTCC will fast-track development of its enterprise digital asset platform in a move towards institutional DeFi. DTCC says it will, over time, embed digital assets within its products and services, develop new blockchain-based offerings, and explore use cases with the industry on blockchain-based solutions.

DTCC will also license the Securrency technology. It plans to work on industry-wide collaboration to avoid fragmentation between digital technologies and standards. Securrency’s technology will act as a DLT-agnostic harmonization layer that promotes interoperability, liquidity, transparency and security.

Acadian Asset Management adopts BNY Mellon’s middle-office platform

Boston-based Acadian Asset Management, which has more than $100 billion in assets under management, is now on BNY Mellon’s middle-office platform. BNY Mellon is now supporting Acadian’s middle-office operations such as trade support, investment book of record (IBOR) and data delivery.

Jim Crumlish, chief information officer at Acadian said that, “strategically, this transition enables us to focus on our core competencies of generating alpha and delivering superior service to our clients, rather than expend valuable resources on commoditized functions. From a tactical standpoint, we’re now able to retire legacy technology, support more transactions and accounts, and implement a more robust global operating model.”

Broadridge’s LTX releases BondGPT+ for enterprise users

LTX, a subsidiary of Broadridge Financial Solutions, announced the launch of BondGPT+, the enterprise version of its BondGPT application, which uses Broadridge’s technology and OpenAI GPT-4 to answer complex bond-related questions and assist users with identification of corporate bonds on LTX.

BondGPT+ contains new capabilities for enterprise clients, such as the ability to integrate enterprise and third-party data. Using several APIs, BondGPT+ can integrate into users’ existing applications and trading workflows.

Capital market tech start-up Globacap raises $21 million in Series B funding round

Capital markets technology start-up Globacap, announced the completion of a $21 million Series B funding round. The start-up aims to digitize and automate the global private capital markets. Investors include Moore Strategic Ventures, LLC, Cboe Global Markets, and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), as well as GABI Ventures and Asia-focused investment firm QBN Capital.

Globacap, which launched six years ago, uses workflow automation software to bring what it calls public markets-like efficiency to private markets. It streamlines processes such as issuance, administration, transferability, and settlement of securities. It hosts 15 white-labels for institutions and has completed about $350 million in secondary transactions of private assets, with automated settlement. It currently administers $14 billion in private securities. 

“The Globacap ecosystem is a vital enabler to our JSE Private Placements business, and our joint relationship has equipped the JSE to drive our diversification strategy in supporting capital formation in private markets,” says Valdene Reddy, director of capital markets at the JSE.

Generali Investments Holding taps Fenergo CLM for financial crime solutions

Fenergo, a provider of know-your-customer (KYC), transaction monitoring, and client lifecycle management (CLM) solutions, says Generali Investments Holding, a holding company of one of the largest insurance and asset management providers, is using Fenergo’s CLM platform for anti-money laundering (AML) compliance.

Generali Investments Holding will use Fenergo’s CLM, KYC, and transaction monitoring to address a rise in sophisticated money laundering techniques and sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“With money laundering techniques growing increasingly sophisticated over recent years, coinciding with an uptick in sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ensuring our AML processes are as robust as possible has been one of our key focuses this year. Having witnessed Generali Real Estate’s successful integration of Fenergo’s technology, we were confident its … KYC and Transaction Monitoring offering would be the best fit for our business,” says Katia Mangiaracina, COO of Generali Investments Holding.

Meritsoft launches platform for post-trade automation

Meritsoft, a Cognizant company, announced the launch of its platform for advanced process automation capabilities. The platform supports firms’ post-trade processing requirements across fails management, financial transaction taxes, CSDR penalty management, settlement efficiency, claims management, brokerage trade expense management, research, and commission sharing agreements.

Meritsoft’s platform was developed with an API-first design, in line with industry-standard methods of communicating data across systems. Data generated by the platform can be interpreted via the API suite, machine learning engines, and AI tools for predictive analytics. The platform can be hosted in a public or private cloud environment.