This Week: SimCorp/Deutsche Boerse, Moody's, SS&C, and more

SimCorp releases investment analytics platform for performance attribution

Danish investment management solutions provider SimCorp, which recently merged with risk platform Axioma in an acquisition by Deutsche Boerse, has introduced a new cloud-native performance attribution platform. The offering is the first piece of SimCorp’s portfolio management solution, Dimension, to be rebuilt on the cloud, says Lars-Ole Hansen, global product manager at SimCorp.

Hansen says clients were asking for a more flexible offering without the high cost of on-premise storage. Cloud, he says, was the obvious solution.

“Attribution is about explaining how your active investment decision impacted your return, and in turn, what the output was, and what the effect of the risk you took in the portfolio was,” Hansen explains.

As Hansen’s team set about to improve SimCorp’s older performance attribution platform, which has been on the market for almost 20 years and has around 150 clients, they could see that the elasticity and scalability offered by cloud could address the legacy platform’s shortcomings.

Previously, portfolio managers had to predict which performance numbers a client might ask for—and “ultimately, calculate a lot of things that no one would ever ask for,” he says. Those figures, which often were calculated by IT departments and middle-office professionals, would then sit on databases, taking up expensive space.

This was also time-consuming. The system would run overnight and be ready the next morning. If a data quality issue arose, such as missing prices, the team would need to rerun the data, sometimes failing to deliver the performance number to the business by noon.

The cloud allows SimCorp to upload more granular data, such as information on the individual holdings, on a daily basis, as well as the index constituents. From there, they can add other information like cash flows. The performance analyst and the portfolio manager can also see the breakdown on performance on the fly.

The offering uses data stored within the SimCorp investment management platform and encompasses all asset classes. Because all assets and transactions are in the same system, users do not have to manually input data from more than one source to determine the underlying exposures.

Technologies like these, Hansen says, can change the relationship between client and portfolio manager. “There are different trends pushing this. One is the need for transparency all the way down, including on funds and derivatives, but also the ability to give clients investors’ access on digital platforms directly … much like what we have seen with online banking accounts ourselves.”

This is important from a risk perspective, Hansen says, and one of the things on SimCorp’s roadmap is to offer multi-factor attribution. To do this, the company is looking to leverage risk solutions by Axioma and ESG factors from another of Deutsche Boerse’s companies, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS).

“One of the trends we’ve seen is clients want to do attribution not only on investment returns, but also on ESG factors, such as carbon emissions,” Hansen says.

Building the new investment analytics platform in the cloud has also opened the door for AI-enhanced question-and-answer performance attribution, Hansen says.

He says the next step is to move the rest of SimCorp Dimension to the cloud. At the moment, Hansen’s team is working on migrating the trade and order management system to cloud. In six to nine months, Hansen expects to have it in production.

“This is where we start,” he says. “Over time, everything will evolve in this direction.”

IPC expands market data coverage with a European derivatives exchange  

IPC, a provider of electronic trading, communications, and infrastructure solutions, added a European derivatives exchange to its connected trading venues and exchanges. 

Customers using IPC’s Connexus Extranet can now access market data for fixed income, equities, equity indices, ETF/ETCs, FX and crypto. Firms can also use data server co-location within IPC’s Equinix FR2 datacenter facilities. Firms located in other datacenters can access the market data through IPC’s connectivity and colocation ecosystem. IPC customers can access market data from liquidity venues through an API.

BBVA Switzerland expands partnership with Metaco 

BBVA Switzerland expanded its 2021 partnership with Metaco in a bid to accelerate its digital asset offerings for institutional clients. The original partnership provided individual clients of BBVA Switzerland with custody and trading services for cryptocurrencies in a portfolio of traditional and digital assets. 

BBVA Switzerland has now migrated its digital assets operations to the updated version of Metaco’s Harmonize, an institutional digital asset custody and orchestration platform. 

This follows last week’s announcement that HSBC has partnered with Metaco to release a digital assets custody service for institutional clients using Harmonize. 

Regnology and Moody’s Analytics partner on regulatory risk and compliance solutions 

Regnology, a software provider with a focus on regulatory reporting solutions, partnered with Moody’s Analytics to provide a risk and regulatory reporting solution, available in some global markets. 

The partnership will see Regnology and Moody’s, an integrated risk assessment provider, combine their regulatory reporting coverage to cover in-depth regulatory requirements across financial markets. 

The solution will use data modeling, calculation capabilities, risk coverage and advanced analytics, as demand for granular-level data in regulatory reporting increases. The solution is cloud native. 

LMAX Exchange Singapore receives regulatory license 

LMAX Exchange Singapore, a subsidiary of LMAX Group, an institutional exchange operator for FX and digital assets, received a Recognized Market Operator License from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. 

The license allows LMAX Exchange Singapore to offer non-deliverable forward (NDF) trading in Singapore and London. The rollout of NDFs allows clients to hedge FX exposure to non-convertible currencies using a central limit order book. 

Pension Insurance Corporation taps Finbourne for enterprise financial data management  

Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC), a specialist UK pension insurer, has chosen Finbourne Technology for investment data management technology. 

PIC manages a portfolio of around £45 billion and provides guaranteed pensions to about 300,000 people in the UK. The firm will use Finbourne’s cloud-native financial data management platform, LUSID, and financial data virtualization engine, Luminesce.  

The firm will consolidate private asset, ESG, market, reference, pricing, analytics, ratings and trading data from multiple sources into one view using the offerings. 

SEB taps Blacksmith’s KYC platform for automation 

Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB) implemented Blacksmith’s KYC platform to automate and improve its data collection for financial institutions’ KYC processes in a partnership that started a year ago. Following an initial KYC pilot project, the platform has now been implemented to digitalize the financial institutions KYC process at SEB. 

FinClear selects Eventus Validus platform for equities post-trade surveillance 

FinClear, an Australian trade execution and third-party clearing services provider, adopted trade surveillance software provider Eventus’ platform Validus for trade surveillance and post-trade monitoring. 

FinClear is involved in half of all retail transactions in Australia and clears and settles about AU$360 billion in transactions a year. The company hosts around 570,000 accounts and services about 250 wholesale intermediaries. 

Andrea Marani, CEO of FinClear execution and clearing services, said that as regulators place the responsibility on brokers to monitor trading activity and ensure market integrity, it is necessary for FinClear to report suspicious activity to the regulators daily.  

SS&C announces SS&C Advent product updates 

SS&C Technologies Holdings released new products on its SS&C Advent solution, including Geneva, SS&C Loan Data, Managed Services, and others. Geneva is the syndicated and private loans offering. The release includes features for traditional closed-end and open-end funds. 

Advent Managed Services has also rolled out an automation job scheduler within the console, offering clients flexibility and control for automation between SS&C and third-party applications. It is also in the testing phases for intelligent workflow solutions in partnership with SS&C Blue Prism. 

SS&C Loan Data, which went live in Q3, can send agent notice data directly to downstream systems. Using OCR and machine learning, SS&C Loan Data digitizes and transfers data directly into SS&C Geneva. It supports syndicated and private loans and gives transparency into the operations and reconciliation processing. 

Alba Bank adopts nCino Cloud Banking Platform for SME lending 

Alba Bank has adopted the nCino Cloud Banking Platform. NCino, a cloud banking provider, will help Alba streamline the lending process from loan application to fund disbursement. As Alba grows, it will offer a scalable SME lending framework. 

The nCino platform will integrate with Alba’s core banking platform and make the submission of loan applications, monitoring of progress, and digital sharing of loan decisions faster and more efficient. 

Earlier this year, the UK Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) and the FCA granted Alba a banking license.