Our FinTech roundup covers news from BNY Pershing, FNZ, SmartStream, Itaú Unibanco and Temenos.
OpenGamma & IHS Markit Begin Collaboration
OpenGamma, which characterizes itself as a margin optimization provider, reports a new collaboration with IHS Markit, which characterizes itself as a provider of critical securities information, analytics and solutions.
The vendors are jointly offering a system for mutual clients looking to reduce the cost of margin management.
Their offering “will unite OpenGamma’s pre-trade margin analytics with IHS Markit’s post-trade derivatives calculation service, providing end-to-end support for in-scope entities,” the companies say in a joint statement.
They will combine the provision of IHS Markit’s portfolio valuations business with OpenGamma’s margin analytics for cleared and bilateral derivatives, so that “mutual clients can fully manage pre- and post-trade requirements through a single solution with flexible delivery options,” the statement continues.
The vendors note further that the “collaboration comes after global regulators introduced a one-year delay to phases five and six of margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives, more commonly known as Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR). The final two phases of UMR, scheduled for September 2021 and September 2022 respectively, will bring into scope numerous institutional asset managers, creating increased demand for tools that help reduce the cost of posting margin.”
Pershing Expands Trading Services to EMEA
BNY Mellon’s Pershing Ltd. reports the expansion of its trading services in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, also known as the EMEA region.
BNY’s Pershing “now offers its global equity trading services to firms who do not hold custody on the Pershing platform,” as well as “beyond the UK and Ireland,” Pershing says in a statement, noting that it has onboarded, or added, “17 clients since October 2019. The clients consist of wealth and asset managers based across EMEA, including in the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Dubai and Luxembourg.”
Pershing Ltd. and its subsidiary, Pershing Securities Ltd., were established in London in 1987, Pershing Ltd. officials note in the statement. Both are subsidiaries of the Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
FNZ Offers Blockchain Utility for South African Funds
FNZ, a platform-as-a-service (Paas) vendor, has signed an agreement with FinSwitch to provide a new blockchain-enabled administration utility for the South African fund management industry, FNZ says in a statement.
FNZ describes itself a “transaction switch” designed by the industry, for the industry. It links market participants by providing a mechanism for data, such as trades, reconciliation, and regulatory reporting, to flow between various product providers and investment managers. It has 140 existing customers, including “all major fund providers and distributors in the region.”
The vendor’s partnerships will include “trading, pricing, reconciliations, account opening, transfers, sharing of instrument data, regulatory reporting, and more for FinSwitch clients.”
Those functions will be provided via a “cloud-based and blockchain-enabled application,” based on FNZ’s existing system, according to the statement.
FNZ launched that blockchain system for the investment industry in 2019, the vendor says. The system will become available for use by FinSwitch clients later in 2020, the statement also notes.
SmartStream’s Public API Covers Collateral
SmartStream Technologies, maker of financial Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM) solutions, expanded its Public Application Programming Interface (API) effort to offer its TLM Collateral Management clients direct and faster programmatic access to such features as collateral movement notifications.
The SmartStream Public API for collateral is intended to ease the integration of the TLM Collateral Management platform “with other applications as well as its clients’ own internal systems,” officials say.
The API extension “helps to lower the total cost of ownership, provides backward compatibility and future-proofs the solution for new operational requirements, with minimal disruption to the clients’ business,” according to the vendor.
The API link to TLM Collateral Management provides “collateral movement and settlement views for the early indication of collateral fails. Other functionality includes, but are not limited to, workflow automation and agreement uploads,” officials say.
Itaú Unibanco Affiliates Embrace Temenos Platform
Banco Itaú (Suisse) SA and Banco Itaú International, affiliates of private bank group Itaú Unibanco Holding SA, will be working with banking software vendor Temenos to deploy Temenos Infinity Wealth and Temenos Transact via Temenos SaaS (software as a service), vendor officials say.
Temenos Infinity Wealth and Temenos Transact use artificial intelligence (A.I.) technologies for “omnichannel mobile and digital banking applications” that support international private banking clients, officials say.
The Temenos “cloud-native, cloud-agnostic, API-first technology” will facilitate “a single, universal wealth management platform,” officials say. The software system spans back-office processing “through to front-office portfolio management.”
“The shift to a single SaaS digital banking platform will drastically reduce the bank’s time-to-market, IT costs and operational complexity and achieve an improved cost/income ratio,” according to Temenos.
Itaú Unibanco offers retail, corporate, investment banking and asset management services for global clients, officials say.
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