This Week: Nice Actimize, S&P Global, MarketAxess, Cboe, and more

Nice Actimize launches new generative AI solutions

Software vendor Nice Actimize, a division of Nice systems, has rolled out three generative AI-based solutions designed to fight financial crime and allow organizations to significantly reduce the manual and labor-intensive tasks currently employed in financial crime investigations and reporting. 

Two of the solutions are embedded into the ActOne enterprise risk case management platform. X-Sight AI Assist and X-Sight AI Narrate, both aim to reduce the number of manual tasks and expedite workflows for analysts and investigators using the platform. 

“When we have an alert allocated to them, they have a massive queue of things to do, they open it up and we try to present things in a meaningful way,” Donna Weiss, senior director of product strategy and marketing at Nice Actimize, tells WatersTechnology. “We have a visual story that shows linkages, but they still have to do some digging.” This can involve retrieving further enrichment data that then has to be brought into the system. 

Now, when a user opens an alert, they are presented with a simple summary that may be a few sentences that present what it is and what the challenge is, as well as identifying areas that have been enriched with more data. Additionally, recommendations are made for what the appropriate next steps might be based on a firm’s policies and procedures. 

In their approach to generative AI, Nice Actimize is training models on the investigative data within its systems as well as the policies and procedures manual that exists within financial institutions. 

The third solution is the Xceed FraudDESK CoPilot, a new fraud analyst assistant generative AI chatbot, which uses generative AI to create efficiency gains in operational analysis. But Weiss says, overall, the vendor is also not looking to rely on conversational chatbots as much as other vendors have, mainly due to the challenges around prompt engineering.

“You need to train users on how to be concise with the context of the question you’re asking,” she says. “It could spin in circles, and it can take a lot of time to go back and forth to finally get the answer that the individuals seek.” In Nice’s case, the appropriate prompt has been written up front, behind the scenes. 

S&P Global acquires Visible Alpha, enhancing investment research capabilities 

S&P Global is acquiring Visible Alpha, a financial technology provider of deep industry and segment consensus data, sell-side analyst models, and analytics from high-quality, exclusive sources. The acquisition will aim to create a premium offering of fundamental investment research capabilities on S&P Global’s Capital IQ Pro platform. 

Founded in 2015, Visible Alpha is a financial technology firm that provides consensus estimates and analytics from in-depth sell-side analyst models, research reports, and corporate access events and distributes the data through a variety of distribution channels, including a web-based platform, APIs, and feeds. Visible Alpha enhances the investment research process by extracting value from key sell-side data and analytics, including full working models from partnerships with approximately two hundred investment research organizations.

Euroclear Bank becomes Eurex Clearing’s securities collateral location

Euroclear Bank, the Brussels-based International Central Securities Depository (ICSD), has become an eligible securities collateral location of Eurex Clearing AG, one of the leading central counterparties (CCPs) globally.

Clients of Euroclear Bank and Eurex Clearing will now be able to post collateral directly to Eurex Clearing with the ability to further optimize the pool of collateral held in Euroclear’s ICSD. The service offering aims to increase operational efficiency for market participants and streamline the collateral management process. Eurex Clearing already uses Euroclear Bank as an eligible securities settlement location.

MarketAxess relaunches Mid-X in Europe

MarketAxess, a provider of fixed income trading marketplaces, has re-launched its Mid-X trading protocol in Europe. Mid-X offers daily, fully anonymous, matching sessions at CP+ Mid-Price, a predictive pricing engine. This leverages the MarketAxess Open Trading network to access a deep pool of sell-side and ETF liquidity to maximize matching opportunities. 

Mid-X provides full anonymity, and limits information leakage with size only revealed when trades are complete and only to those involved in that trade. The fees are embedded in the CP+ price displayed, so it removes the need for typical end-of-month invoicing. Clients will submit IOIs and then the matching algo will deliver fills, DNT items, and failed trades. 

Adaptive announces testing results of Aeron technology on Google Cloud

Adaptive Financial Consulting, a provider of electronic trading technology solutions, have shared the results of the performance testing of its Aeron technology running on Google Cloud infrastructure.

Aeron is a cloud-native, open-source, low-latency message transport. It is used to build high-performance trading systems with microsecond latency and millisecond recovery. Completed in collaboration with Google Cloud, the testing showed that Aeron, combined with Google Cloud, allows capital markets firms to build low-latency, resilient trading systems in the cloud, removing dependence on traditional on-premises infrastructure.

Aeron consists of Aeron Transport for messaging, and Aeron Cluster for zero downtime, 24/7 trading systems. Aeron Premium provides an additional set of components to further enhance performance, security, fault tolerance, and recovery. Testing took place with a range of Google Cloud services leveraging C3 instance types, placement policies, and a variety of storage options.

Cboe Global Markets, MSCI collaborate to offer new index options and volatility indices

Cboe Global Markets has announced a new strategic initiative in collaboration with MSCI to expand its suite of Cboe-MSCI Index options and volatility indices. 

Cboe and MSCI have collaborated for many years to offer a variety of indices and tradable products. In this latest initiative, Cboe will further expand its existing MSCI Index options suite by introducing three new products based on additional MSCI global indices: Cboe MSCI World Index Options (MXWLD), Cboe MSCI ACWI Index Options (MXACW), and Cboe MSCI USA Index Options (MXUSA). These options are set to begin trading on Monday, March 18, pending regulatory approval. 

In addition, Cboe is broadening its volatility index suite with the launch of two new Cboe MSCI Volatility Indices: the Cboe MSCI EAFE Volatility Index (VXMXEA) and the Cboe MSCI Emerging Markets Volatility Index (VXMXEF). Developed using Cboe’s proprietary VIX Index methodology, these indices are based on existing MSCI EAFE Index Options (MXEA) and MSCI Emerging Markets Index Options (MXEF) and are designed to provide a transparent measure of the market’s expectation of 30-day implied volatility by these respective MSCI index option classes.

Similar to the VIX Index, which is designed to reflect investors’ consensus view of future (30-day) expected US stock market volatility, the new Cboe MSCI Volatility Indices aim to provide comparable measures for international and emerging equity market volatility. 

The new options will be based on the MSCI World Index, the MSCI ACWI Index, and the MSCI USA Index, which are benchmarks for measuring international, developed, and emerging markets and US equity performance. Both MXWLD and MXUSA options will be based on a fraction (1/100th) of the value of their underlying index.

Cboe to list iShares by BlackRock ETFs 

Additionally, Cboe Global Markets has announced that Cboe Australia has listed for trading new exchange traded funds from iShares by BlackRock. With these new iShares ETF listings, BlackRock becomes the first global asset manager to list its iShares ETFs on each of Cboe’s listings exchanges in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, and the European Union. Three of the funds commenced trading on Cboe Australia on February 16, 2024, while two Australian hedged versions of the funds are planned to launch today, February 23.