This Week: IPC extends Google Cloud partnership, BlackRock/AIA, DTCC and more

IPC extends Google partnership to allow secure cloud access

Communications, trading and infrastructure solutions provider IPC now supports hybrid network connections to Google Cloud through its network-to-network cloud connectivity services.

Nitish Gupta, senior global product manager in IPC’s cloud services division, tells WatersTechnology that the vendor is increasing its existing partnership with Google to meet continued customer demand for the service.

Gupta says there are two ways to connect to Google Cloud through IPC, hence the term “hybrid.” The first is a hosted connection model, which is done via certified partners who have successfully completed Interconnect partnership agreements and established “interconnects” with Google.

“The second flavor is a completely dedicated connection,” Gupta says.  “If a customer comes to us and they want connectivity to Google Cloud in one of the locations in the US, for example, we can do the dedicated connection as well, which means it’s a private dedicated connection, and not shared. It’s dedicated to that customer only.”

IPC’s customers can connect to Google Cloud through the company’s multi-cloud platform, Connexus Cloud. But the company maintains partnerships with other cloud providers to enable access to different cloud environments for IPC clients.

“We are provider-agnostic, so our customer requirements drive our partnerships and development efforts,” he says. “We see the demand from our customers to follow [Google’s] cloud strategy, and we want to be the partner in that strategy.”

AIA partners with BlackRock, BNY to upgrade investment platform

Hong Kong-based multinational insurance firm AIA Group has inked an agreement with asset manager BlackRock and Bank of New York to improve its proprietary investment platform.

According to the press release, AIA will incorporate BlackRock’s Aladdin tech platform and BNY’s specialized investment operations and data management services into its existing offering to support AIA’s growth.

Duco launches reconciliation capability for unstructured data

Duco, an enterprise platform for data automation, has launched an end-to-end reconciliation feature for unstructured data. With the new capability, Duco clients will be able to automate the costly and time-consuming process of extracting relevant information from unstructured datasets.

Duco’s Adaptive Intelligent Document Processing (AIDP) uses the company’s proprietary AI software to power models that are trained on clients’ specific document types and improved through continued human interaction. Unstructured datasets are typically not “cleaned”—where the relevant insights have not been identified prior to purchase—and tend to be in a range of different formats including PDFs, scanned images, or emails, making standardizing them difficult. 

DTCC’s unveils VaR calculator

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. (DTCC) has rolled out a public-facing Value at Risk (VaR) calculator. It allows market participants to evaluate margin and clearing fund obligations associated with becoming a member of the DTCC’s Fixed Income Clearing Corp. (FICC) Government Securities Division (GSD). The new calculator lets DTCC clients calculate obligations on a simulated portfolio using FICC’s proprietary VaR methodology.

With US Treasury clearing activity processed through FICC expected to rise by $4 trillion daily after the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) expanded clearing mandate is implemented in 2025 and 2026, DTCC’s VaR calculator can be used by firms to determine VaR and potential margin obligations for any simulated portfolio.

Iress extends Dow Jones partnership 

Data and technology vendor Iress has extended its partnership with Dow Jones Newswires to give Iress subscribers access to real-time market news across all asset classes and geographies. The news, including from Dow Jones publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Barrons and MarketWatch, is integrated into customer workflows within Iress’s market data and trading software.

TNS onboards LTSE market data feeds

Transaction Network Services (TNS), a multinational financial services firm offering payments, financial and telecommunications services, has expanded its market data offering and will now support the Long-Term Stock Exchange’s (LTSE’s) new range of MEMX’s Order Information Record (Memoir) market data feeds.

Traders can now use TNS’s ultra-low latency infrastructure for global order routing and access to LTSE’s full range of multicast market data, including the three new LTSE data feeds available via Memoir, which is a proprietary multicast data protocol developed by MEMX now available for LTSE traders via their new trading system.

SS&C debuts new Contact Center platform

SS&C Technologies has released its new Contact Center platform to help asset management, life and pensions and retirement sectors improve the customer experience.

The single global platform for customer communications enables SS&C’s Contact Center clients to deliver personalized experiences to their customers around the clock. In addition to voice, email and secure messaging, investment managers can leverage intelligent automation technologies to access customer information instantly and provide improved experiences across products and geographies.

The Contact Center platform features several AI chatbot capabilities and speech analytics to further enhance self-service capabilities. Multi-channel support with voice, email, chatbot, and AI-enabled intelligent virtual assistants is available on a fully outsourced or platform basis. Over the next 18 months, SS&C will be introducing improved fraud detection, analytics around customer sentiment, and co-pilot solutions to the platform.

CME Group and CF Benchmarks launch new crypto indices

Derivatives exchange CME Group and cryptocurrency benchmark indices provider CF Benchmarks have announced that they will be launching two new cryptocurrency reference rates as well as real-time indices for Ripple XRP and Internet Computer. These rates and indices will be calculated and published daily by CF Benchmarks, starting July 29.

The new benchmarks will, like existing CME CF Benchmarks reference rates and indices, use pricing data from crypto exchanges as well as trading platforms. Each of the new benchmarks will be calculated with pricing data taken from a minimum of two of the following exchanges: Bitstamp, Coinbase, Gemini, itBit, Kraken, and LMAX Digital.

Each of these new reference rates will provide the US dollar price of each digital asset, published once a day at 4 pm GMT, while each respective real-time index will be published once per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.