This Week: Overbond, Northern Trust, FIS/Torstone, Trading Technologies, and more

Overbond integrates Neptune Networks axe data

Overbond, a provider of AI-driven fixed-income analytics and trade workflow automation, has integrated axe data from Neptune Networks, a fixed-income, pre-trade market utility, to enhance the functionality and accuracy of Overbond analytics.

Vuk Magdelinic, CEO at Overbond, tells WatersTechnology that at the end of the day, it’s about data integration. The Overbond product already has the capability to aggregate different data sources to produce recommendations on size, routing and liquidity profile, and market price per security.

What the Neptune data inclusion does for buy-side shops is make the dealer quotes and execution components of that aggregation more robust and extends the coverage and precision and relevance of the signals for particular buy-side desks, making it a client-specific solution. 

Magdelinic says the integration is the result of a year-long strategy and about six months of work from an engineering, data science and AI testing perspective. 

Axes have been distributed to clients by sell-side fixed-income desks to signal which securities they are interested in trading. Buy-side participants use this information to execute large trades, optimize order allocation and source liquidity for less liquid securities. 

Overbond will use Neptune’s axe data—unique to each client—to enhance its size-adjusted pricing, which will sit in its analytics and trade automation suite.

In September last year, Overbond unveiled its smart order routing (SOR) algorithm, aimed at addressing the time-consuming and challenging process of allocating trades via the best execution route. The SOR algorithm uses historical information alongside current dealer axes, which are unique to clients, to determine the optimal dealer to engage for a specific security given current market conditions. 

He adds that the live axe data from Neptune will further enhance the precision of the Overbond SOR algorithm. 

As buy-side adoption increases, Overbond will look to deploy its next-generation SOR, which helps buy-side desks with recommendation of where to route—not just among the dealer inventory choices, but also with regards to the venues and protocols they’re connected to. 

“Overbond is focused on deploying to both buy-side and sell-side custom price aggressiveness levels that can deliver trade execution efficiency in accordance with the trading desk strategy and past execution record. This enhancement can be delivered to the trading desks via API and within Overbond’s existing SOR service or independent of it,” Magdelinic says. 

Northern Trust taps Finbourne’s data solutions

Northern Trust has selected Finbourne Technology to provide enhanced valuations and reporting capabilities for its enterprise global technology. The asset manager will use Finbourne’s cloud-native financial data management solution, Lusid, and specialist financial data virtualization engine, Luminesce, to modernize its valuations and reporting functions. 

Northern Trust’s requirements for a technology provider are to support the modernization of its valuation and reporting capabilities while integrating with its broader digitalization journey, which includes a data mesh approach to enterprise data management. 

These capabilities will be delivered through the Matrix Data Platform, which will be Northern Trust’s new “digital backbone”. 

Using Finbourne’s Luminesce to load data into Lusid will enable users to validate and analyze activities such as valuations or restatements in an efficient manner. Meanwhile, Finbourne’s open API approach will allow Northern Trust to integrate Lusid with its broader data mesh platform, enabling valuations and other key data to be presented in near real-time. 

FIS acquires Torstone Technology

FIS has expanded its capital markets technology suite with its recent acquisition of post-trade platform provider Torstone Technology. The acquisition will strengthen FIS’s market position with the addition of Torstone’s post-trade securities and derivatives processing capabilities. 

It will also allow Torstone to scale its technology and extend its global presence. The merger is anticipated to provide enhanced operational efficiencies, reduce costs and increase innovation in post-trade processing. 

Trading Technologies connects to European Power Exchange, closes Ateo acquisition

Trading Technologies has announced connectivity to the European Power Exchange (Epex Spot), the largest power exchange in Europe. This connection provides clients with the ability to trade the European physical power markets for the first time on the TT platform.

In collaboration with a large European energy supplier, TT offers a new, continuous intraday power trading capability to clients globally as a fully co-located service. 

Epex Spot, which operates from Paris, is an independent subsidiary of the European Energy Exchange covering power markets in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, the UK and Switzerland. 

TT users trading Epex Spot intraday markets can leverage the platform’s algorithmic and other automated trading tools, including its risk management capabilities across the trade lifecycle. 

Separately, TT also announced that it has closed the acquisition of Ateo SAS, a provider of post-trade solutions for listed derivatives. The acquisition allows TT to expand into clearing and other middle-office technologies and services. 

Ateo will operate as a global managed service hosted in TT’s datacenters. Its post-trade allocation engine is already fully integrated into TT’s OMS. 

Exegy adds intraday signals to iceberg tool

Market data and trading technology provider Exegy has added intraday signals to its AI-powered iceberg order detection tool, Liquidity Lamp. This addition provides quantitative traders with visibility on the volume of iceberg orders throughout the day, with summary files every 10 minutes. 

Before this, Liquidity Lamp offered firms the choice between real-time and end-of-day signals. With the addition of intraday files, Liquidity Lamp allows quant traders to make data-driven decisions while the iceberg trades are occurring and ahead of market close, allowing traders to react to opportunistic trades in real-time.   

Liquidity Lamp provides perspective on US equities trading, filtering the “noise” created by retail and high-frequency trading activities. The summarized updates on iceberg trading activity are delivered as a CSV file via a cross-connect at the NY4 datacenter or to an AWS S3 bucket of a trader’s choice.

Fusion Risk Management makes genAI assistant available 

Fusion Risk Management, a cloud-based operational resilience, business continuity, and risk management solutions provider, has announced the general availability of its AI-powered assistant, Fusion Resilience Copilot, following a global beta pilot program.

Resilience Copilot gives risk teams more visibility into incidents and allows them to answer critical questions across impacted assets, understand impacts on all services, and improve program effectiveness following an incident by identifying recovery strategy gaps and improvements. 

Contextual prompts in the Fusion platform allow users to ask critical questions about their continuity, risk management, and resilience programs and receive fast, clear recommendations and situational summaries that will enhance users’ decision making. 

This will allow clients to improve and expand critical activities, including business impact analyses, continuity plans, incident management, issue management, and scenario testing. 

Railpen pension fund appoints BNY Mellon for data platform

Railpen, the fiduciary and investment manager of the UK railways’ pension schemes, has selected BNY Mellon to provide a cloud-based data platform to simplify its data architecture and support the resilience of its operating model. 

The data platform will provide greater insights from Railpen’s proprietary data for investment reporting and generating analytics. 

Railpen is responsible for the safekeeping and investment of around £34 billion ($43 billion) in assets for its 350,000 members of the railways pension schemes. 

BNY Mellon will also provide Railpen with other services including custody, investment accounting and front-office support solutions for its public and private assets. 

SIX partners with Clearstream for reference data distribution

SIX has partnered with Clearstream to connect its flagship platform, Connexor, to D7, Deutsche Börse’s digital post-trade platform, to process and distribute reference data for financial instruments. 

The initiative is a response to a regulatory directive introduced in June 2021 under the German Electronic Securities Act, which mandates the standardized, digital transmission of book entries by issuers of financial instruments.

The directive necessitates a comprehensive solution for reference data distribution—offered by the creation of one single access for product issuers. Issuers can fulfill and simplify their reporting obligations and related procedures by accessing D7 via Connexor, thus eliminating the need to construct direct interfaces on their own. 

The connection between Connexor and D7 will be activated provisionally in the second half of 2024.

Ice launches cloud-based audio solution

Intercontinental Exchange (Ice) and IPC Systems, a trading communications solutions provider, announced plans to launch Ice Voice, a cloud-based audio solution offered with Ice Chat to provide a communications platform for traders and other market participants.

Ice Voice will bring together Ice Chat’s network of more than 120,000 active users and IPC’s Connexus Unigy private cloud platform to provide always-on, open connections between individuals or groups of traders across internal trading desks and with any other Ice Chat user signed up for the service. 

Users will be able to jump from chat to voice, open calls from chat tabs and group chat rooms, and create Voice Blasts to “shout out” to groups of open connections simultaneously. The service will also support full audio recording with configurable retention, anywhere, anytime playback of archived calls, and integrated chat and voice logs to create a single record of communications. 

TS Imagine adds new functionality to TS One

TS Imagine has added new functionality of enhanced compliance, risk, and order management tools within TS One, its cross-asset solution for investing teams. 

The new functionality is available through TS One’s interface built on scalable SaaS architecture, alongside its existing tools for the front, middle, and back offices.

TS One’s compliance tool comprises a multi-asset class compliance engine that’s pre-programmed with more than 60,000 global rule variations covering trade, position, portfolio management, and risk monitoring. The enhanced compliance tool allows investment teams to visualize, automate, communicate and report more effectively. 

Its enhanced risk analytics module allows financial risk management teams to monitor their exposure in real-time, while accessing advanced analytics and stress testing along with insights related to Value at Risk, historical scenarios, and other projections. All the risk management tools within TS One are accessible through a risk reporting dashboard.

For order generation, the enhanced functionality includes a customizable portfolio monitoring dashboard, which allows users to visualize positions and exposures and track the weighting of their portfolios. Users can use the TS One dashboard to construct model portfolios. 

T. Rowe Price taps Clearwater Analytics for stable value funds support

T. Rowe Price has chosen Clearwater Analytics, a SaaS-based investment management, accounting, reporting, and analytics solutions provider, to support the firm’s growing stable value fund business. 

Clearwater for Stable Value will help T. Rowe Price address the complex needs of stable value funds, including the creation of custom trade tickets for investment contract issuers and other third parties. 

The solution will offer T. Rowe Price’s front-office and back-office teams access to the same reconciled investment data each day, with an enhanced view of market and contract value, accounting, external manager data, crediting rate calculations, and streamlined contract issuer trade documents. 

Duco releases transaction reporting eligibility validator

Duco, a provider of AI-powered data automation, has launched its transaction reporting (TR) eligibility validator. 

The TR eligibility validator will initially be available for EMIR, and more regimes will be added later. It provides an independent validation of internal eligibility rules, with a field-by-field comparison of individual financial services firms’ rules versus existing eligibility requirements set by the European Securities and Markets Authority.

The tool flags under/overreporting using Duco’s reconciliation and exception management capabilities and Quorsus’ regulatory industry knowledge. 

Gresham Technologies continues US growth trajectory

Gresham Technologies, a provider specializing in real-time data integrity and control solutions, is continuing to grow its business in North America following its acquisition of Electra, a post-trade automation solutions provider, in June 2021. 

Gresham recently confirmed a new $1.5 million five-year contract to support the US cash management operations at a Tier-1 global investment bank. It now supports more than 150 customers in North America including asset managers, hedge funds, banks, and financial trading firms. 

To help bolster its growth in the US, Gresham has appointed Daniel Witham as senior sales director, as which he will be responsible for building key relationships with the financial services sector. Prior to joining Gresham, Witham was with data automation firm EZOps as business development director for North America.