RIMES, the Symphony Software Foundation, and SBI BITS Co. also have FinTech news to share.
New Offering from DTCC Data Products
DTCC Data Products, a centralized data provisioning service supporting DTCC’s offerings, is launching the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) Data Service, which has gotten the thumb’s up from Barclays Bank, officials say.
The new LCR Data Service has been designed to “help firms manage their buffer requirements for liquidity facilities” so they can support commercial paper (CP) obligations and help firms “meet more stringent regulatory capital requirements” of Basel III BCBS 238, according to DTCC officials.
Barclays is among the first customers to go live via DTCC’s LCR Data Service, confirms Navneet Kaur, business line treasurer, portfolio management at Barclays. “DTCC’s new LCR Data Service has significantly enhanced our ability to understand buffer requirements,” Kaur says in a statement, adding that the offering is “very comprehensive.”
The new service will help banks get “a precise view of when the underlying corporates’ CP obligations are due,” DTCC officials say. This information is needed by banks as they issue facilities to corporates to provide liquidity against outstanding CP, says Ron Jordan, managing director of data services at DTCC, in a prepared statement. “The LCR Data Service allows banks to receive overnight delivery of aggregated maturities based on outstanding CP market positions, and refine buffer requirements relevant to market exposure, thus allowing banks to manage their business more efficiently while complying with liquidity coverage mandates.”
The DTCC Data Products’ custom data provisioning capability offers firms “a consolidated view of their trading activities as well as aggregated and anonymized market data sourced from DTCC’s transaction, reference and asset services data,” officials say. “By the end of this year, DTCC Data Products will include data solutions that cover all major asset classes (equities, derivatives and fixed income) in addition to high demand data in DTCC Data Products’ Benchmark, Referential and Liquidity data categories.”
In addition, DTCC officials report that the Data Products division has had “significant growth across its suite of offerings” since the group launched last year.
RIMES Bolsters MDS Offering
RIMES, a provider of managed data services for the buy side, has added two features to the RIMES Managed Data Service (MDS) in the form of two workstation offerings, the Managed Feeds Workstation and the Benchmark Analytics Workstation, that support operations professionals and benchmark users in the front- and middle-office, officials say.
The addition of the two workstations is intended to help firms with the “increased demands for improved data governance” that must support high-level corporate and strategic objectives, officials say. A recent Forrester study commissioned by RIMES on the state of data management of 100 buy-side firms reveals that “80% of buy-side data users and data operations professionals said their key priority was to leverage data management to improve business planning.”
The new workstation offerings are also intended to help firms deal with increased regulatory oversight of the asset management industry, officials say. “There are increased demands for more transparency from regulators on what data asset managers are using, where it comes from, and how it is treated and manipulated,” officials say. “For example, the EU Council has adopted new Benchmark Regulation to be enforced in 2017, which will set EU standard to combat the manipulation of financial benchmarks.”
The RIMES Managed Feeds Workstation helps Ops professionals analyze and manage summarized and detailed feed and benchmark inventory data, as well as service-related information, to support a firm’s data governance processes with access to provenance and lineage reports covering data from source to the point of use
The RIMES Benchmark Analytics Workstation supports performance, risk and compliance operations via “insight into any changes within a specific benchmark,” officials say. “The tool highlights key attributes of a benchmark such as joiners and leavers of a specific index, showcasing the potential impact of any changes to the index.”
“There is no dispute that managing data causes major operational headaches and if not managed properly can result in inaccurate information for the investment manager, and ultimately business losses,” says Steve Cheng, global head of data management solutions at RIMES in a statement.
Symphony Messaging Foundation Releases Open Developer Platform
Symphony Software Foundation, a nonprofit supporting the Symphony messaging platform, has announced the availability of an Open Developer Platform that offers access to the Symphony API, best-of-breed development tools and additional support, officials say.
The Foundation will serve as the host for open source development of the “Symphony platform, bots, apps and integrations on the Symphony Platform and open source technologies common to the financial services industry,” officials say. The Open Developer Platform is intended to provide community contributors and Foundation member organizations with open development support.
“Open source fueled the cloud and big data revolutions. As a result, financial institutions and fintech firms are now increasingly considering this approach to drive faster innovation, pervasive adoption and superior integration capabilities, while lowering development cost,” says Gabriele Columbro, executive director, Symphony Software Foundation, in a statement.
“It’s no longer about choosing between proprietary or open source. It’s about selecting the best open source platform and to engage your community,” Columbro continues. “While the financial services industry is behind the open source adoption curve, the digital revolution continues to pull financial institutions into the next century. This, along with the rise of fintech and regtech, is driving the need for innovation and interoperability. And that is where the Foundation plays a key role for industries in the Symphony ecosystem.”
The Foundation team showcased the platform at the FinDEVr Silicon Valley conference held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, Calif., Oct. 18-19, officials say.
ALPHA8 Trader Workstation to Debut October 28
The Tokyo-based vendor SBI BITS Co. will launch on Oct. 28 an integrated solution, ALPHA8, that targets independent financial advisors (IFAs), professional investors, and small corporations, SBI BITS develop the product in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Markets KK and Dell.
“ALPHA8 platform is a bundled service with powerful trading tools. Going forward we will be enriching the platform with innovative value-added services,” says Chung Sok Chon, CEO of SBI BITS, in a prepared statement.
The ALPHA8 solution consists of:
- The EIKON Core software package from Thomson Reuters, which delivers real-time news in English and Japanese, market data and analytics on a wide range of asset classes;
- The Dell Precision Tower 3000 Series, Tower 3620/ 5000 Series, Tower 5810;
- And a wide 43-inch display, with Ultra HD 4K resolution and very clear display.
