This Week: Goldman/Finos; JP Morgan/Baton; Caixa AM; IHS Markit

Goldman Sachs Makes Internal Tools Open Source

Non-profit Finos (the Fintech Open Source Foundation) announced that its member Goldman Sachs is making a major open source contribution to the foundation. Goldman’s contribution is a logical modeling language, named Pure, and a platform and visual model tool that generates Pure-based models, known as Alloy.  Pure and Alloy are used within Goldman across the trade lifecycle to price; assess and evaluate risk; clear transactions; and perform regulatory reporting. The open-sourcing of Alloy and Pure will occur in three phases. In the first phase, already begun, a new external version of Alloy is being deployed using GitLab for modeling source control. In the second phase, to begin in January, other banks and financial services organizations will be invited to use this new external Alloy instance to pilot collaborative financial model development in Pure. Following the pilot, the underlying Alloy and Pure code itself will be made publicly available in a Finos GitLab repository under an Apache 2.0 open source license. This final phase is expected to be completed in mid-2020.

Baton and JP Morgan Develop Solution for Cash and Collateral Transfers

Post-trade solutions vendor Baton Systems and JP Morgan have developed a solution that enables the near real-time orchestration of cash and collateral transfers to multiple clearing houses. The new service addresses the challenge of having to tie up excess funds across the clearing workflow by integrating settlement instructions for custodians and other funding sources into existing optimization and treasury systems without any need to dismantle technology infrastructures. The technology is being scaled across global clearing houses and enhanced with new functionality with the potential to facilitate more complex clearing arrangements.

Caixa Asset Management Adopts Bloomberg Tool

Caixa Asset Management has adopted Bloomberg’s Asset and Investment Manager (AIM). Caixa AM will use the full suite of Bloomberg AIM solutions, including portfolio analytics and risk management, trade execution and compliance tools. The AIM suite helps increase efficiency and lowers costs by optimizing operations to ensure compliance with regional rules and regulations. In addition, the consistency of data, execution and flow of operations available through Bloomberg AIM, will support the future growth of Caixa’s business. Caixa AM also expanded subscriptions to the Bloomberg Terminal.

IHS Markit Brings Real-Time Municipal Bond Issuance Data and Management to Buyside Investors

IHS Markit has announced the launch of Ipreo Muni for institutional investors, the first electronic platform to directly connect asset managers to live primary market information published by municipal bond dealers. The platform provides a centralized hub of real-time pricing, analytics and issue-specific updates for all municipal new issuance.

“Across the financial services industry, technology has delivered greater efficiency and faster access to market data, but for the municipal buyside community, these benefits have not been fully realized,” said Will MacPherson, managing director at IHS Markit. “Our new platform introduces a proven electronic framework for the information ecosystem in primary markets and is a continuation of our strategy to make primary markets more efficient by enhancing the connectivity between participants.”

The new platform is an extension of the industry-leading bookbuilding and syndication management services from Ipreo, which was acquired by IHS Markit in 2018.

Broadridge acquires ClearStructure 

Broadridge has acquired ClearStructure Financial Technology, a provider of portfolio management solutions for the private debt markets. “ClearStructure’s component services enhance our existing multi-asset class, front-to-back office solution, providing our clients with a unique capability to access the public and private markets,” said Eric Bernstein, Broadridge’s head of asset management solutions. “This acquisition aligns to Broadridge’s strategy of providing a true cross-asset platform to enable asset management clients to have a single view into their entire book of business.”

McKay Brothers Adds Shanghai and Hong Kong to Asia Services

McKay Brothers International is now offering connectivity at the lowest-known commercial latency between the Tokyo-CC2 data center and trading centers in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The procured hybrid microwave/fiber service between the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) data center and the @Tokyo-CC2 data center takes less than 22.86 milliseconds (ms) round trip, the lowest known commercial latency. MBI’s service between the HKEx data center and @Tokyo-CC2 delivers data in less than 39.83 ms round trip, also the lowest known commercial latency. In addition, McKay recently improved the latency of its hybrid microwave/fiber service between the Singapore Exchange and @Tokyo-CC2, which offers the lowest known latency between those two end points. McKay Brothers debuted its first Asia hybrid microwave/fiber network in 2016, offering the lowest known latency between Tokyo and Singapore.

EastNets announces partnership with Refinitiv to provide industry-leading AML, compliance solution

EastNets and Refinitiv announced a partnership to offer enhanced automated access to software and data that enables real-time risk management and enhanced compliance capabilities. The partnership will deliver an enhanced integration of Refinitiv’s Risk Intelligence data within EastNets’ technology, including the en.SafeWatch Filtering (SWF) solution. EastNet’s SWF solution utilizes machine learning and analytics to perform watchlist screening and AML detection in real-time. SWF works with Refinitiv’s APIs to integrate the company’s data, including its proprietary and World-Check Risk Intelligence data, aiming to help customers to manage risk and meet regulatory obligations.