SettleMint and Torstone Technology also have fintech announcements.
Opus Targets GDPR Third-Party Requirements
Opus, a vendor of compliance and risk management solutions, has launched the Third Party GDPR Compliance solution, created to “identify and manage General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) risk in third-party relationships,” officials say.
“The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which comes into force on May 25, 2018, is a significant overhaul of data protection laws that impacts all companies that process the personal data of EU citizens. Among other requirements, organizations that are subject to the GDPR must clearly document their data processing activities and have procedures in place to promptly detect and notify regulators, and any affected individuals, if they experience a data breach,” according to the vendor. “This means that organizations need to know which third parties have access to personal data, and understand their third parties’ information security procedures, to properly respond to GDPR.”
Opus officials say that the Third Party GDPR Compliance solution is based on published regulatory guidance from the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office, and “allows organizations to identify third parties that expose them to risk.”
The offering helps users to:
- Identify the third parties with whom personal data is shared;
- Scope the appropriate controls for each third party based on the data shared;
- Send relevant questionnaires to each third party to assess whether they meet these controls;
- Automatically map responses back to specific controls;
- Assess and document the effectiveness of a third party’s controls;
- And recommend and track remediation where a control is not met
More about Opus’ GDPR solution here.
SettleMint to Build Sharia-Compliant Offerings
The Islamic Research and Training Institute, the research arm of the Islamic Development Bank Group, and fintech startup SettleMint are going to build a blockchain-based financial product that “can potentially be used to support development and inclusion in IsDB member countries,” officials say.
“SettleMint, together with their local partner Ateon, will be working on the first of its kind use case using Blockchain’s smart contracts to create Sharia-compliant financial products,” officials say. “The evolution and increasing interest in Blockchain represents a paradigm shift in the industry. It is apparently disrupting (in a positive way) the traditional financial landscape, creating a wide array of new business opportunities and cutting operational costs dramatically.”
The effort supports “the Islamic-economic perspective, money should be transparent, stable, and trustworthy. Blockchain technologies are able in principle to serve these objectives robustly and cost-effectively,” according to officials.
Smart contracts are “essentially self-executing digital contracts. The terms of the agreement between the parties in a transaction are electronically coded in smart contracts and will execute when pre-defined conditions are met,” according to Settlemint. “The use of smart contracts, therefore, enables the automation of the entire contractual process for Islamic institutions, alleviating the additional administrative and legal complexities and redundancies associated with Sharia-compliant financial products.”
SettleMint will deploy its Mint dAPI on top of customized Ethereum smart contracts and specific wallet software to bring this innovation to the IsDB member countries, officials say.
CLSA Signs Contract with Torstone Technology
Torstone Technology, a vendor of post-trade securities and derivatives processing, announced that the CLSA, an Asian capital markets and investment group, has signed a multi-year deal to use Inferno and has gone live with the solution, officials say.
“CLSA’s Japan operations will deploy Inferno to improve and automate the processing of trade feeds from its front-office systems through to its current back-office,” according to Torstone. The deployment will facilitate trade capture and reconciliation. In addition, the firm will deploy Inferno modules for cash management, regulatory reporting, corporate actions processing, and collateral management, officials say.
“We are pleased to be working with the team at Torstone Technology who has been able to provide CLSA with a tailored solution that optimizes a number of post-trade processes critical to the efficient functioning of our business,” says Philippe Bredel, chief operating officer (COO) for CLSA Japan, in a prepared statement.
Need a Reprint?