In other FinTech news, Donnelley Financial embraces Form N-CEN, the CFTC and Singapore Monetary Authority cooperate, and ICE Data Services and OneMarketData have created a new service.
BlackRock’s ETF Will Follow a New Thomson Reuters Index
BlackRock, considered the world’s largest asset manager, and Thomson Reuters, a provider of market data, trading systems and news, have combined forces on an exchange traded fund (ETF) that helps investors support environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets via companies in developed and emerging markets.
The ETF was crafted by BlackRock while Thomson Reuters will track companies promoting diversity and inclusion.
The iShares Thomson Reuters Inclusion & Diversity UCITS ETF (Ticker: OPEN, the Fund) will track the “Thomson Reuters Global Large/Mid Diversity and Inclusion ex. Controversial Weapons Equal Weight Total Return Index,” a.k.a. the Index, which is related to the “Thomson Reuters Diversity & Inclusion Index,” officials say.
The new Index “transparently and objectively ranks more than 2,000 publicly-traded companies globally, and consists of the top 100 companies with the most diverse and inclusive workplaces, as measured by 24 metrics across four key categories: diversity, inclusion, people development, and news and controversies,” officials say. “The Index embraces a broader spectrum of diversity dimensions and goes further than other indices in this segment which have tended to focus more narrowly on aspects such as gender.”
“We are delighted that BlackRock is paving the way in developing the first ETF to track the index. We look forward to bringing this partnership with us into Refinitiv and to working with the industry on similar ESG-based initiatives,” says Debra Walton, managing director of customer proposition, financial and risk at Thomson Reuters. (The Thomson Reuters financial and risk business will become Refinitiv on Oct. 1, after the closing of the partnership transaction between Thomson Reuters and private equity funds managed by Blackstone.)
“We know that diverse teams make better decisions, and this is ultimately good for investors,” says Rachel Lord, head of EMEA at BlackRock, in a statement. “We are launching this fund at a time when a spotlight is firmly on companies to show what they are doing to improve diversity of their workforce, and as investors demand new funds to express specific preferences within their portfolios.”
Donnelley Financial Files Form N-CEN SEC Submission
Donnelley Financial Solutions, a provider of risk and compliance systems, reports that it has submitted the new form N-CEN, which replaces form N-SAR, to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Donnelley calls it the “first successful submission” of the new form, which addresses both legal and financial matters, adding that it was completed ahead of schedule and employed Donnelley’s ArcFiling platform.
Donnelley Financial’s ArcFiling “provides a single, cloud-based application to create, package and submit documents directly to the SEC,” the firm says, adding that it is “on track to complete N-CEN filings covering approximately 4,000 investment funds in the first year of the new requirement.”
Form N-CEN is “larger in scope than the Form N-SAR it replaces,” Donnelley says, “containing approximately 500 questions for filers to respond to, many of which are new and cover both finance and legal functions. Donnelley Financial says it is critical for filers to load data weeks in advance and validate it with a comprehensive filing solution such as ArcFiling or to submit a test filing to identify any errors or issues that must be resolved before the actual filing.”
CFTC & Singapore Monetary Authority Cooperate on FinTech
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore’s central bank, report the signing of an “arrangement to foster greater cooperation in FinTech.”
This arrangement is the CFTC’s “second FinTech cooperation arrangement with a non-US authority and its first with an authority in Asia,” the participants say.
Their cooperation arrangement regarding financial technology innovation “focuses on information sharing on FinTech market trends and developments. This includes sharing insights derived from each authority’s relevant FinTech sandbox, proofs of concept, and innovation competitions. The FinTech Arrangement also facilitates referrals of FinTech companies interested in entering the other’s market.”
ICE Data Services & OneMarketData Ready New Offering
Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., (ICE) an operator of global exchanges and clearinghouses and a provider of data and listings services, reports that its ICE Data Services will offer an “on-demand tick data and analytics service, utilizing OneMarketData’s OneTick platform.”
This service, ICE says, will be provided over the ICE Consolidated Feed, which “delivers aggregated real-time data and content from over 600 global sources. ICE Data Services will be the exclusive third-party distributor for this hosted service.”
OneTick is a “platform for real-time and historical tick data, and an extensive analytics library for quant research, market surveillance, transaction cost analysis (TCA), trading and risk management,” the firm says.
Under the ICE Data Service-OneMarketData agreement, OneTick analytics will be “hosted by ICE Data Services and powered for customers with the ICE Consolidated Feed, offering a cost-effective, on-demand data platform, integrated with low-latency access to normalized information from global markets,” the companies say.
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