In other news, Northern Trust goes mobile, Nasdaq upgrades its risk platform, Finastra embraces ESG, and Clearstream launches a bank.
Pershing X is Expanding Its Services
The Pershing X technology provider and business unit of BNY Mellon reports that it hopes to bring new analytics and data management to clients via a collaboration with Snowflake, a data cloud provider.
Pershing X is “expanding its stand-alone data service offerings to wealth management firms” via the Snowflake Financial Services Data Cloud, officials say. The partnership is intended to yield faster access to data and more efficient ways to collect, manage and report data.
The Pershing X start-up business unit is “focused on delivering the most interoperable and data-driven suite of advisory tools in the wealth management industry,” officials say. The Pershing X technology “is integrated with multiple leading custodians.”
The Snowflake Data Cloud helps “unite siloed data, discover and securely share data, and execute diverse analytic workloads,” officials say.
Northern Trust’s Mobile App Accesses Front Office Solutions
Northern Trust is launching a mobile telephone application for Android and iOS users that will expand access to the custodian bank’s front office solutions platform for asset owners and other institutional investors, officials say.
“Allocators are seeking ways to optimize the time they spend managing their research process on the road,” said John Turney, head of Front Office Solutions at Northern Trust, in a prepared statement.
The Front Office Solutions mobile application offers clients a user-friendly interface, navigation, and filtering options “to help clients stay organized and informed while on the go,” officials say.
The Front Office Solutions product set offers on-demand access to documents, research management, and manager relationship functionality, officials say.
The new mobile application “allows clients to search for files and notes with flexible filtering options. In addition, it allows clients to add notes on the go with the option to save file attachments so that information can be captured wherever and whenever clients choose,” officials say.
“Front Office Solutions will continue to add functionality in the new app through planned future releases,” according to the announcement.
Front Office Solutions is a cloud-based service platform that helps investment offices view portfolio and investment information across all asset classes in a unified framework, officials say. The firm is offering the platform to complex asset owners such as foundations, endowments, family offices, pensions and outsourced chief investment officers (OCIOs).
The Chicago-based Northern Trust offers wealth management, asset servicing, asset management and banking to corporations, institutions, affluent families and individuals, officials say. The firm has offices in 22 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., and across 23 locations in Canada, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region.
As of December 31, 2022, Northern Trust had assets under custody/administration of US$14.8 trillion, and assets under management of US$1.4 trillion, officials add.
Nasdaq Bolsters Platform to Manage Real-Time Risk
Nasdaq reports that has upgraded its risk mitigation platform, “widely used by the banking and broker-dealer community to manage liquidity and market risk” to help firms facing “extreme market conditions.”
The upgrade of the cloud-based Nasdaq Risk Platform offers “a live view of risk across proprietary and client trading portfolios with detailed analytics to support real-time decision-making,” officials say. The upgrades of the Software-as-a-Service (Saas) offering incorporate “additional asset classes and live streaming capability to better navigate extreme market volatility.”
This latest release of the Nasdaq Risk Platform “adds fixed income securities including government bonds, corporate bonds and convertible bonds to offer users a consolidated view of risk across a broad range of asset classes including fixed income, equities and equity options, exchange traded derivatives and foreign exchange,” according to Nasdaq, which also improved multi-factor and intraday stress testing tools.
“We’ve seen a significant increase in demand from banks and broker-dealers who recognize the importance of being able to distill, analyze, interpret, and act on signals in a genuinely live environment,” says Roland Chai, executive vice president and head of marketplace technology at Nasdaq, in a prepared statement.
Nasdaq has also added an open source distributed streaming system, Kafka, “to feed live risk analytics, and fully incorporating Nasdaq Derivatives Pricing into the platform,” officials say.
“Nasdaq Derivatives Pricing provides streaming option analytics including theoretical prices, greeks and recalibrated option volatilities to clients. The integration enables firms to conduct P&L, Value at Risk (VaR) and stress testing calculations on option portfolios which is done using recalibrated intraday volatility surfaces, a three-dimensional plot mapping option values against the possible strike prices of an underlying stock,” officials say.
Finastra Adds ESG Data to Fusion Invest
Financial software applications Finastra reports that it is partnering with Alygne, a sustainability technology platform vendor offering tailored environmental, social, and governance (ESG) alternative data, in a bid to help asset managers with their ESG investment decisions.
A new connector links Alygne’s data into Fusion Invest, “allowing users to leverage the portfolio management capabilities of the solution to ensure portfolios support their ESG-related values,” according to Finastra.
The integration of Finastra’s Fusion Invest with Alygne’s platform “will allow financial institutions to utilize ESG alternative data on private and public companies,” officials say.
“Making investments that coincide with corporate and customer values is front of mind for asset managers, but a lack of access to data and metrics makes this challenging,” says Fabien Féron, senior product manager – Fusion Invest at Finastra, in a prepared statement.
“In addition to using traditional financial metrics to monitor their portfolios, our customers can strengthen their decision-making process by accessing Alygne’s tailored ESG data through our solution. They can easily check the impact of trade simulations for both public and private markets,” Féron says.
The Fusion Invest integrated platform covers the investment value chain and offers automated processes that work with an Investment Book of Records and multi-GAAP accounting book of records (IBOR and ABOR), officials say.
Clearstream Launches Bank for Fund Execution
Post-trade services provider Clearstream has created a bank in Luxembourg for institutional fund investors, dubbed Clearstream Fund Centre S.A., that will serve Clearstream’s fund execution business Vestima, officials say.
“The new entity operates under a commercial banking license in Luxembourg. It will be an important cornerstone of Deutsche Börse’s and Clearstream’s Fund Services,” which is the business segment for fund execution, distribution and data management, officials say.
The Clearstream Fund Centre will provide access to “more than 230,000 funds in over 50 markets. The entity is regulated under MiFID to support clients to fulfil regulatory fund requirements,” officials say. The new bank “will be closely interlinked with Clearstream’s ICSD and CSD businesses, leveraging cross-divisional synergies for its clients.”
The Clearstream Fund Services delivers solutions via its three business lines: Vestima, a fund processing platform for order execution, settlement and custody services; Fund Centre, a European fund distribution platform that connects international asset managers and fund houses with distribution partners; and Kneip a European fund data hub that provides premier fund data management and reporting solutions for asset managers.
Clearstream is part of Deutsche Börse Group, which consists of international exchanges and market infrastructures.
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