This Week: DTCC, SIX-Orenda, Neuravest, Overbond, Quod, and more

DTCC outlines plans for T+1 settlement by 2023

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) has proposed a two-year roadmap for shortening the US equities settlement cycle from settlement two days after trade execution (T+2) to T+1, touting the benefits of cost savings, and lower market risk and margin requirements. Officials say that based on an industry consultation conducted during 2020, market participants “increasingly favor” a move to T+1 to benefit from capital and operational efficiencies, risk reduction, and lower margin, especially during volatile and stressed markets.

Under its proposal, in the first quarter of this year, DTCC will complete a prototype of its Project Ion settlement system, which supports T+1 using distributed-ledger technology (DLT). In the second half of 2022, DTCC will begin transitioning to an “enhanced settlement model” that more closely integrates processes from its National Securities Clearing Corp. (NSCC) and Depository Trust Company (DTC) settlement subsidiaries, which it says could yield an 11% reduction in NSCC margin volatility. By 2023, DTCC proposes that the US settlement cycle should officially move to T+1.

Responding to the announcement, industry body Sifma noted that the proposal will be “a substantial undertaking requiring broad industry actions,” and called for sufficient time to complete the change.

SIX buys majority stake in AI, ESG startup Orenda, as Deutsche Börse closes ISS deal

Swiss exchange group SIX Group has taken an undisclosed majority stake in Canadian artificial intelligence (AI) provider Orenda Software Solutions, which delivers high-frequency environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores and reputational insights on companies to measure sustainable investment. Officials say the deal will enable SIX to provide “consumption-ready” data and analytics to drive faster decisions by clients, while allowing Orenda to accelerate its expansion and the development of new solutions.

The news comes in the same week that Deutsche Börse said it had completed its previously announced deal to acquire an 81% stake in sustainable investments data provider Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), strengthening its existing ESG data and indexes offering.

Lucena rebrands as Neuravest, unveils algo portfolio platform

Neuravest Research (formerly Lucena Research) has rolled out its algorithmic portfolio construction and management platform, which uses alternative data and AI technology to deliver superior fund performance. Institutional asset managers can choose from 18 pre-configured thematic portfolios covering a range of assets, investment styles, turnover goals, durations and themes. Neuravest leverages alternative datasets from 37 providers, which its proprietary technology evaluates to assess their predictive qualities.

Overbond taps Rapid Addition to bring AI pricing to bond traders

Overbond, a Toronto-based provider of AI tools for fixed-income pricing, has enlisted UK-based FIX specialists Rapid Addition to help the company integrate its Cobi Pricing Live AI pricing engine into the electronic bond trading venues and platforms used by buy-side and sell-side trading desks. Officials say that using Rapid Addition’s RA Platform 3.0 to integrate Overbond’s AI tools could help traders fully automate up to 30% of requests for quotes (RFQs), and partly automate an additional 20% of executions (with trader supervision). Cobi Pricing Live generates prices and liquidity scores for more than 100,000 fixed-income instruments and can build curves for more than 10,000 issuers in various real-time liquidity scenarios.

Octopai adds Snowflake support to ease firms’ cloud migrations

Tel Aviv-based date lineage and discovery platform provider Octopai has announced support for the Snowflake cloud database, to help firms achieve faster and more seamless migrations from on-premise data and systems to Snowflake. Officials say that prior to any migration, Octopai can map objects that are no longer necessary, reducing the time and cost of migration, and post-migration can understand how different tables and columns of data are used, thus reducing the number of exploration queries over Snowflake, reducing its ongoing cost.

Quod debuts multi-asset Middle Office platform

London-based order and execution management systems (OMS and EMS) provider Quod Financial has unveiled a middle-office product, developed last year in response to client demand for the ability to centralize multi-asset trade booking in a single, automated tool. Delivered as a hosted platform, Quod Middle Office consolidates flows from front-office systems and execution venues to create a multi-asset golden source for trade booking and allocations, with post-trade FIX allocations, commissions, and fees enrichment, and back-office integration, covering equities, derivatives, currencies, fixed income and digital assets.