This Week: Octaura, Fix/ISO, Delta Capita/Montis, and more

Octaura launches syndicated loan trading platform

Octaura has unveiled a syndicated loan trading venue incorporating electronic trading protocols, analytics, and straight-through processing. The company started life as a joint project between banks aiming to combine their collateralized loan obligation (CLO) trading into a single platform (you can read more about Project Octopus here).

Octaura has the backing of seven major syndicated loan dealers. Clients on the platform can execute via traditional request for quote (RFQ) on single line items or a list of facilities. The product was built in collaboration with Genesis Global, a low-code software development platform for financial markets.

In total, nine dealers and over 90 asset managers are either trading on the platform or onboarding. Octaura says that it now aims to integrate and develop trading solutions for additional asset classes.

Fix adopts ISO’s Digital Token Identifier

The Digital Token Identifier (DTI) ISO standard has been added to the Financial Information eXchange (Fix) Protocol, a messaging protocol for electronic communications between financial institutions.

The DTI uniquely identifies digital ledgers, digital tokens and cryptocurrencies using publicly available information. More than 1,300 DTIs have been issued so far, including private ledgers and tokenized assets. The standard can be used by regulators to monitor digital asset trades and to help identify systemic risks. It has also been recommended by European regulator Esma as a risk management measure under the DLT Pilot regime.

Adding the DTI to Fix will enable users to incorporate the trading and settlement of digital assets into their current trading and settlement operations, which is intended to drive standardization and transparency. As a result of the change, the existing Fix datatype “Currency” will now include both fiat currencies and digital assets.

Delta Capita partners with Montis on distributed ledger CSD

Capital markets consulting and technology provider Delta Capita has acquired the capital markets business of blockchain company Setl, and signed up Montis, a subsidiary of digital securities exchange and broker Archax, as a minority investor in a project to create a central securities depository (CSD) service to handle tokenized assets in debt and equity markets.

Delta Capita Distributed Ledger Services will provide the Setl technology and software development of core CSD services, including Archax Exchange and Swift connectivity, access to Target2 for central bank money settlement, and cross-chaining between external permissioned blockchains.

Delta Capita and Montis are targeting a go-live date in Q4, 2023.

TP Icap buys into ipushpull series A

Data solutions company TP Icap has taken a minority stake in data sharing and workflow platform ipushpull as part of a series A funding round. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

A press release published by TP Icap said that ipushpull will use the funding to expand its team, enhance the connectivity of the ipushpull platform, and scale up its live data sharing and workflow automation capacity.

ipushpull’s platform enables clients to share pricing and trade data by extracting and consolidating unstructured data from sources like Microsoft Excel alongside structured data from APIs and databases. TP Icap has used ipushpull’s services since 2018. The investment will see closer integration of ipushpull’s technology in TP Icap’s Fusion Connect product.

Dan Wray, CIO at TP Icap, will join ipushpull’s Board of Directors as part of the investment.

Burton–Taylor: Global index revenues swell to $5.3 billion in 2022

Global index revenues increased 5.9% in 2022, totaling a record $5.33 billion, according to a study by Burton–Taylor International Consulting.

Index industry revenues increased across all revenue segments, with asset-based fees rising 12.8% annually over the last five years. Higher AUM in exchange traded products drove growth for most providers, but exchange-traded funds declined by 4.6% to $9.552 trillion. Investments continue to flow into ESG and similar thematic funds, but traditional equity indices still capture 2 of every 3 dollars earned by providers.

FTSE Russell, S&P Dow Jones Indices, and MSCI account for more than 2/3rds of total index revenue globally, according to the study. You can read more about the incumbent index providers and the newer companies trying to disrupt the market here.

SteelEye and Enfusion partner on order management and trade supervision

SteelEye and Enfusion have begun a partnership to automatically feed trade and order data from Enfusion’s investment management products to SteelEye’s integrated compliance platform.

The project aims to simplify the process of implementing trade-based compliance. Alken Asset Management has become a joint client of the new technical partnership.

JBWere NZ chooses Duco for reconciliation

Wealth manager JBWere NZ will use a no-code platform from data automation company Duco to automate cash and asset reconciliations.

The New Zealand-based firm will use Duco to reconcile cash and securities held with sub-custodians, share registries and banks. Previously, this process was performed using individual spreadsheets split by registry, sub-custodian and market.

Liquidnet and TP Icap Midcap team up on small and mid-cap equities

Brokerage firms Liquidnet and TP Icap Midcap have partnered to provide block liquidity in small and mid-cap equities. In a press release, the firms said that combining their client networks and technology could help to increase block liquidity opportunities in European SMEs and reduce the cost of trading for members.