In other FinTech news, the Irish Funds Industry Association has blockchain results and S&P Global partners with Kensho.
OPTX to Work with Bloomberg Professional Services
International agency broker Bloomberg Tradebook is attempting to overhaul the agency business model with the launch of the OPTX single platform that exploits quantitative data models and analytics to optimize order routing and other aspects of electronic execution operations.
Bloomberg Tradebook works with buy- and sell-side firms to provide direct market access (DMA), access to liquidity, market information and trading technologies through the Bloomberg Professional terminal service.
The OPTX offering works with Bloomberg Tradebook’s equity and options offerings in the United States, “including benchmark algorithms, which now connect to a series of counterparty algorithms that are optimally chosen based on order, market and broker characteristics,” Bloomberg officials say.
The OPTX offering encompasses Bloomberg Tradebook’s proprietary liquidity-seeking strategies, such as B-Dark, B-Smart and ETF RFQ, and “the portfolio algorithm and PAIR platform, which leverage data from Bloomberg functionality,” officials add.
In a “fragmented, regulation-heavy, electronic world,” execution partners are specializing in “different parts of their technology stack,” says Glenn Lesko, CEO and president of Bloomberg Tradebook, in response to FTF News. “This leads to expertise being spread across various partners, which needs to be standardized and evaluated,” Lesko says.
The OPTX offering, which provides clients with destinations, can drive down implicit costs, Lesko says.
Bloomberg officials say that key aspects of OPTX can help end-users prove that they are providing best execution services via:
- Request for Information (RFI) support that draws from “all partners based on pre-defined, standardized questions that span from routing and execution practices to technology stack questions;”
- Historical and real-time quantitative modeling to allocate and switch between multiple strategies based on standard benchmarks and their drivers;
- Post-trade transparency into performance metrics;
- And real-time and standardized transparency into execution venues.
The OPTX offering also features performance measurement support that can help portfolio managers.
“OPTX offers services that directly help portfolio managers drive down implicit costs that are tied to performance of active portfolios,” Lesko say. “The performance results are available in in-trade and post-trade transaction cost analysis functions.”
Bloomberg Professional service subscribers can gather more information about Bloomberg Tradebook via www.bloombergtradebook.com and the vendor’s corporate blog at: www.bloombergtradebook.com/about/blog/
Irish Funds & Deloitte Complete Blockchain Proof-of-Concept Project
The Irish Funds Industry Association (Irish Funds), an industry body for the international investment fund community in Ireland, has completed its blockchain proof-of-concept project for regulatory reporting, dubbed RegChain.
Irish Funds officials have been developing RegChain with Deloitte and global asset servicing and fund management institutions such as Deutsche Bank, Metzler, Northern Trust and State Street, officials say.
“The proof of concept tested the application of blockchain technology and its functionality for the capturing of transactions, the management of reporting with smart contracts capability and enhanced compliance, which increased transparency and developed a cost benefit analysis study to measure the benefits of future blockchain solution,” according to Irish Funds officials. “The technical build used Ethereum and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System).”
The project, which focused on the resident investment fund returns (Money Market and Investment Funds Returns Reporting or MMIF Reporting), resulted in the design of a blockchain and smart contract technology platform for regulatory reporting “accessible to the reporting entity as well as a regulator,” Irish Fund officials say.
Irish Fund officials say the key findings from the project are:
- The blockchain system can act as a secure store of data, improve data quality and integrity, and increase the efficiency of the regulatory reporting process via the application of smart contract capability;
- Blockchain can help in the overall management of regulatory change requests as well as facilitate additional or new reporting requirements. Within the blockchain a change can be coded once on the platform and then progressed across the network to all participants as opposed to each institution managing a change request in their own operations;
- Blockchain technology can help with the provision of a safe network for data sharing and transmission, a dataset upon which analytics can be applied, built-in disaster recovery and the ability to develop new capabilities such as automated compliance;
- The proof of concept solution can be adopted to incorporate other regulatory reports such as AIFMD Annex IV;
- And blockchain projects require a multi-disciplinary approach. New solutions must be cognizant of existing industry requirements and built for varying needs across the operational world if they are to be successful and advanced to pilots and production in the short term, officials say.
Irish Funds’ 115-plus members oversee more than 13,500 funds with a net asset value of €3.8 trillion, officials say.
S&P Global Division Invests in Kensho Technologies
The market intelligence division of S&P Global has just signed a strategic relationship with Kensho Technologies, an analytics, machine learning, and data visualization systems vendor serving Wall Street’s global banks and investment institutions, officials say.
The long-term relationship “will result in product and data collaboration” between the two organizations, officials say.
Through this strategic relationship, S&P Global Market Intelligence data will feed Kensho’s analytics platforms and serve as “a basis for existing and new Kensho analytical tools,” officials say. “Both parties will collaborate on future product development to bring new and innovative capabilities to market. Additionally, S&P Global will have a board observer seat at Kensho,” officials add.
“As we continue to evolve and develop our services for the investment community, this close relationship with Kensho will bolster our capabilities in data visualization and machine learning, delivering value, efficiency and automation to our clients,” says Mike Chinn, S&P global market intelligence president, in a prepared statement.
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