In other news, RQD* Clearing exits stealth mode, the NY Fed & BIS innovate, and Pendal wants more from Northern Trust.
Collaboration Takes Aim at Developers’ Burdens
Goldman Sachs and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be launching a suite of cloud-based data and analytics solutions for financial institutions, dubbed the Goldman Sachs Financial Cloud for Data, officials announced at the AWS re:Invent conference this week in Las Vegas.
The cloud-native Goldman Sachs Financial Cloud for Data will be aimed at hedge funds, asset managers and other institutional clients. “It significantly increases the power of Goldman Sachs front-office analytics tools, such as PlotTool Pro, a leading time series analytics tool from Goldman Sachs, and GS Quant, the firm’s Python toolkit,” officials say.
The effort is intended to ease the burden on developers within investment firms that “spend significant time and energy customizing various tools to manage, interpret, and analyze financial data at scale,” officials add.
Most of the current solutions “for financial data management and analytics are based on a patchwork of legacy technologies that struggle to meet the latency and scale requirements of modern investment practices. As a result, investment firms may spend their engineering expertise managing undifferentiated infrastructure and wrangling data, rather than innovating at the speed they would like for their customers,” according to the announcement.
The collaborators hope to “vastly reduce the need for investment firms to develop and maintain foundational data-integration technology and lower the barriers to entry for accessing advanced quantitative analytics across global markets,” officials say. The firm also wants institutional clients to be able to get financial applications to market faster, to optimize their resources and re-focus on portfolio returns, and to hasten innovation.
Clients will be able to integrate their proprietary data with the Goldman Sachs curated financial markets data, “including select third-party data products through Goldman Sachs Financial Cloud for Data’s integration with AWS Data Exchange,” officials say. “The data is then available in Goldman Sachs’ securely managed time-series database and analytics engine, which is capable of storing and integrating tick-level financial data across hundreds of different assets in real-time.”
Officials say that access to a preview of the Goldman Sachs Financial Cloud for Data offering is available via the GS Developer Console or via the AWS Marketplace. To request preview access, visit http://developer.gs.com/discover/ .
New Correspondent Clearing Provider Launches
A new correspondent clearing vendor, RQD* Clearing, officially launched this week, touting an advanced suite of clearing, custody, and execution solutions for broker-dealers in the retail, institutional and active traders, as well as foreign financial institutions and proprietary trading firms.
The RQD platform has been live for six months and has been used by multiple broker-dealers for clearing, officials say.
The RQD platform supports U.S. equities, options, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and offers clearing, custody, and execution services – all accessed via an application programming interface (API), officials say.
The clearing and custody solutions are hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Both solutions “offer real-time trade reporting through a web-based GUI and enable automated, paperless account opening. The co-located execution services include smart order routing, an advanced suite of algorithms and ultra-low-latency direct market access (DMA),” officials add.
“For two years, our team has worked incredibly hard behind the scenes building our cloud-native platform. We’re extremely excited to exit stealth mode today and officially launch our company,” says Michael Sanocki, CEO of RQD, in a prepared statement.
New York Fed Opens Innovation Center in NYC
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York wants to facilitate the design, creation, and launch of new financial technology products and services for the central bank community and has launched the New York Innovation Center (NYIC) to do so, officials say.
The New York Fed is setting up the NYIC via a partnership with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub. Per von Zelowitz is running the NYIC — he joined the New York Fed in July 2021 to design and lead this effort, officials say.
“As part of the New York Fed, the NYIC is collaborating with the Federal Reserve System, the BIS Innovation Hub, and public and private sector experts to validate, design, build, and launch new financial technology products and services for the central bank community,’ according to an official announcement.
The NYIC will coordinate with the BIS Innovation Hub to pursue common goals and will “focus on five opportunity areas: supervisory and regulatory technology, financial market infrastructures, future of money, open finance, and climate risk,” officials note. “The NYIC will develop opportunities from concept to in-market solution. This work will be based on the venture development process, drawing on principles from entrepreneurship, venture capital, and corporate innovation to produce high-impact solutions.”
“The NYIC represents a unique opportunity to drive innovation in collaboration with the central bank community,” Mr. von Zelowitz said. “I am excited to work with colleagues and partners to develop ideas and bring new products and services to the world of central banking.”
Pendal Group Taps Northern Trust for More Services
Global investment manager Pendal Group Ltd., based in Sydney, New South Wales, has tapped Northern Trust to provide asset services across Australia, the U.K., and Ireland, and to expand the existing services it offers for Pendal’s business in the United States, officials say.
“The appointment by Pendal, a global investment manager with funds under management of A$139.2 billion (approximately US$104.4 billion), covers its wholly owned subsidiary J O Hambro Capital Management (JOHCM) in North America and Europe as well as its Australian business,” officials add.
Northern Trust also reports that it has been providing fund administration, regulatory administration, global custody, and transfer agency services to JOHCM “since establishing its first mutual fund offering in the U.S. in 2009,” officials say. “This mandate will now be extended to include global custody, fund accounting, financial and regulatory reporting, collateral management, and foreign exchange and middle-office services across all Pendal’s businesses.”
“We conducted an extensive RFP [request for proposal] and due diligence process and, following this, are pleased to continue growing our partnership with Northern Trust’s asset servicing business,” says Nicholas Good, CEO for Pendal, in a prepared statement. “Their expansive service offering will allow us to consolidate the number of providers we have across the business, thereby simplifying our operating platform and standardizing a number of our key processes.”
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