DTCC releases white paper that address quantum risk

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation has put out a white paper that aims to identify initial steps financial services firms can take to protect against new risks that could arise from quantum computing. The paper, titled “Post-Quantum Security Considerations for the Financial Industry,” can be found here.

The DTCC has suggested that firms begin to assess and respond to this security threat by:

• Sizing up the effort by identifying systems and encryption mechanisms in scope for remediation.

• Strengthening cryptography practices by centralizing the management of keys and certificates, instilling standards for encryption mechanisms, and implementing change management for new encryption solutions.

• Developing and exercising a playbook that details the steps needed to replace an encryption platform while ensuring the plan can be executed on time.

• Modifying and separating systems, as needed, to facilitate work to come.

• Beginning organizational change management efforts to build a strong risk culture and risk-based mindset within organizations.

The DTCC also suggests closely monitoring activities taking place within the regulatory community that address topics like standardization, including NIST’s focus on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards.

AccessFintech raises $60 million

AccessFintech, a workflow collaboration platform provider, has raised $60 million in a Series-C round funding, which was led by WestCap. Additional investment was secured from BNY Mellon and Bank of America, with further participation from Series B investors Dawn Capital, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Citi. The vendor has raised $97 million since 2018.

Synergy, AccessFintech’s cloud-based data collaboration network, has over 100 participants and has recently expanded its asset class coverage to include derivatives and syndicated loans. The start-up is also aiming to help banks, broker-dealers, custodians and asset managers address regulatory changes around, for example, the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) and the proposed transition to T+1 settlement.

Jacobi raises $10 million

Jacobi Inc., a trading platform provider to the buy side, has raised $10 million in a Series-A round of funding, which was led by Queensland Investment Corporation. QIC joins a stable of investors that includes Illuminate Venture Partners, 8VC and Western Technology Investment.

Jacobi, which was founded in 2014, provides portfolio management and analytics via a cloud-based platform. It’s clients include T. Rowe Price, MFS Investment Management, Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), and WTW.

Talos integrates crypto tools from Lukka

Talos, a provider of digital asset trading technology, will integrate crypto asset data management, valuation, and reporting solutions provided by Lukka. Talos, which aims to provide institutional-grade tools for the capital markets, hopes to bolster the end-to-end trading experience in this nascent asset class by incorporating Lukka’s post-trade software, which is purpose-built for the crypto space.

Acadia updates open-source derivatives engine

Acadia, which provides risk management tools for the derivatives community, has released the seventh iteration of the Open Source Risk Engine (ORE), an open-source framework for pricing and risk analysis. Released in 2016, the engine aims to improve pricing and risk analytics of traded financial products. ORE is based on QuantLib, the open-source library for quantitative finance. Going forward, Acadia will follow a quarterly release rollout schedule.

Infima expands MBS coverage

Infima, a fixed-income predictive analytics provider, has expanded its coverage of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to bonds backed by government agency Ginnie Mae. Infima uses a web-based application that deploys deep-learning techniques to provides prepayment analytics to understand trends in the MBS market, as well as provide forward-looking predictions.