This Week: ICE, Nasdaq/R3, BMLL/OpenFin, DASH 

ICE Launches ICE Select

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has launched ICE Select, an application providing connectivity to the ICE Fixed Income ecosystem, including the ICE Bonds execution platform, and ICE Data Services evaluated pricing and analytics.

ICE Select has been integrated with leading order management systems, and customers will have access to liquidity and execution protocols from ICE Bonds through the ICE ETF Hub later this year. 

ICE Select offers connectivity to liquidity across all of ICE Bonds’ execution platforms, including ICE BondPoint, ICE TMC, and ICE Credit Trade. Together, these platforms provide trading for corporates, municipals, treasuries, agencies, and emerging market bonds.

Users can also execute across a range of protocols, including click-to-trade, portfolio auctions, and request for quote (RFQ), and in June will be able to access content and pre- and post-trade analytics from ICE Data Services.

ICE plans to integrate additional data and analytics from ICE Data Services, including ICE Credit Risk, ICE Portfolio Analytics and ICE Data Indices, into ICE Select later this year.

Nasdaq and R3 Partner to Support Institutional Grade Assets 

Nasdaq and R3 have signed a long-term, non-exclusive collaboration agreement to build full lifecycle solutions for digital assets marketplaces. 

Under the partnership, Nasdaq’s Market Technology business can support new institutional-grade assets using R3’s enterprise blockchain software, Corda to manage the complete asset lifecycle for new and existing market infrastructure operators on a 24/7/365 basis. 

The collaboration will also advance Nasdaq’s efforts in helping digital assets marketplaces strengthen transparency standards to align with their capital markets counterparts as they evolve their business. 

Johan Toll, head of digital assets, market technology at Nasdaq, said R3’s Corda platform will allow Nasdaq to harness the power of scalable design and new interoperability.

BMLL Builds Derived Data Desktop App on OpenFin

BMLL Technologies is collaborating with OpenFin to build its Derived Data desktop application on OpenFin’s OS. 

The Derived Data application will provide buy-side users with access to market metrics created from the most granular Level 3 order book data, to analyze and visualize their portfolio over time. 

The tool will allow traders, portfolio managers, risk and compliance offers, to better understand the liquidity profile and risk of their portfolio and associated trades. They can screen for, highlight, view, and compare market quality metrics to measure and improve their execution performance and assist with best execution oversight. 

By using OpenFin, BMLL will make its data and analytics available to OpenFin’s ecosystem, including banks, buy-side and sell-side firms, technology vendors, and the fintech community. 

Its Derived Data desktop app will be fully interoperable with other third-party apps built on OpenFin’s OS and easily integrated into existing client workflows. 

BMLL will deliver the app to trading participants in the second quarter of 2020. It will later add other metrics such as execution analytics, market impact, and trading costs, and tools to visualize the order book.

DASH Launches DASH 360R

DASH Regulatory Technologies—the regtech arm of execution services provider DASH Financial Technologies—has launched DASH 360R to automate the calculation and reporting compliance process. 

DASH360R, a modernized version of its LDB platform, is available in both fully SaaS-based and on-premise deployment options, allowing broker-dealers to choose between the scalability, security, and flexibility of the cloud or complete control via local deployment. 

In the US, broker-dealers are required by the SEC and FINRA to maintain certain levels of capital and demonstrate moment-to-moment compliance with the SEC Net Capital Rule. This means brokers must be able to calculate their capital charges on an intra-day basis. 

Using DASH 360R, clients can support multiple users and parallel optimizations, allowing each user to build unique configurations to meet their needs. Also, secure remote access is more straightforward now, replacing VPN configurations used by clients to access desktop applications outside of the office. 

TransFICC Closes Series A Funding

TransFICC, a provider of low-latency connectivity and workflow services for fixed income and derivatives markets, has closed its Series A investment for £5.75 million ($7.15 million). The funding round was led by AlbionVC and included investments from ING Ventures and HSBC. 

The new investors join existing shareholders Citi, Illuminate Financial, Main Incubator-Commerzbank’s R&D unit, and The FinLab. 

TransFICC will use the investment to extend product and market coverage for existing and new clients. Its current clients include five global investment banks and one global market data vendor. 

It’s One API for eTrading platform provides connectivity to multiple trading venues while supporting workflows across asset classes such as rates and credit bonds, and interest rate swaps.  

Regis-TR and Sensiple Partner on SFTR Services

European trade repository Regis-TR has partnered with Sensiple, a regulatory technology solution provider for repo and secured lending, to provide an interoperable, web-based, end-to-end automated reporting solution for Securities Finance Transaction Regulation (SFTR) requirements. 

The partnership entails the integration of Sensiple’s regulatory platform—Setrega—to provide straight-through-processing SFTR reporting automation. Clients will have the capability to use Setrega’s technology to delegate their end-to-end reporting. 

Clients can also push files to Sensiple for conversion into ISO standard 20022 to be reported seamlessly to REGIS-TR under SFTR. Since Setrega is also cross-jurisdictional, clients with multiple reporting obligations to Mifir, EMIR, and other regulatory requirements in the G20 framework, can use this platform for reporting accuracy and completeness.

FIF Launches CAT Utility

The Financial Information Forum (FIF) has launched a CAT Counterparty Contact Utility, a secure central repository of CAT counterparty contact information. Once requested and approved, brokers will have access to the utility for contact information of counterparties. 

The utility will facilitate compliance with the CAT requirement that obligates brokers to repair interfirm linkage errors by T+3. Access to the utility will be available to all CAT reporting brokers. 

The utility will be an important industry function once testing of interfirm linkages goes live on July 27, 2020. The three-month testing cycle will allow brokers to identify the counterparties that cause the interfirm linkage mismatches, ensure that proper matching criteria is established, and test the repair and resubmission process in preparation for production go-live on October 26, 2020. 

Below are the five most-read stories on WatersTechnology.com from the past week.