Our roundup includes briefs about BTP & TASE, SocGen & Nuvo Prime, IHS Markit & Credit Benchmark, and BNP Paribas, Citi, JPMorgan, Actinver joining CLSNet.
Cobalt to Help Citi’s Bilateral Flow
Cobalt, the foreign exchange (FX) post-trade services provider, reports that Citi intends to go live on its infrastructure for bilateral trading.
Cobalt points out that its trading infrastructure is applicable across a variety of FX trading types, including banks, buy-side firms, prime brokers and retail brokers. The vendor also creates a standardized joint record of all FX trades, officials add.
Employing this data set, Cobalt offers “a multitude of back and middle office solutions such as credit management, netting, and finality services.”
Citi will continue as an investor and shareholder in Cobalt, the forex specialist adds.
Cobalt officials say they use low-latency technology and a centralized platform of standardized data for matching and confirming trades via a single, joint record. The vendor’s unique database then facilitates middle and back-office support.
Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to Work With BTP
Blockchain Technology Partners (BTP), founded in 2018, reports that it plans a partnership with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) meant to “ensure the production readiness of [the TASE’s] Blockchain Securities Lending (BSL) platform and provide ongoing support for this once it is launched.”
BTP characterizes current securities lending in Israel as “fragmented, inefficient and opaque. TASE sees this as a market opportunity and its BSL platform is designed to address these issues by enabling direct lending among all the major financial participants; and offering a one-stop-shop for all securities lending activities, permitting access to larger securities volumes within shorter timeframes, even operating in shorter-term positions.”
TASE dates its establishment in Israel to September 1953, and BTP calls TASE’s function in the Israel economy “central,” pointing out that it is the “only securities exchange in Israel,” with Israeli companies and the Israeli government depending on TASE markets for “capital and liquidity.”
SocGen to Use Nuvo Prime’s SwapScale
French banking giant Société Générale reports that it has signed a long-term contract with Nuvo Prime Ltd., a cloud-based software development and consultancy financial technology company, calling for the implementation of Nuvo Prime’s SwapScale.
The agreement is for a seven-year software-as-a-service (SaaS) contract that will implement Nuvo Prime’s “flagship swap trading and management system, SwapScale, a next generation cloud-based application,” the bank and the vendor say in a statement.
The SaaS offering, scheduled to go live in the third quarter of this year, will “enable Société Générale to deliver swap products to its institutional client base,” per the statement.
“Nuvo Prime’s cloud native scalable technology enables digital transformation to take place rapidly, in a controlled and cost efficient manner,” Richard Déroulède, Societe Generale’s head of prime services and clearing, says in the statement.
IHS Markit Adds Credit Benchmark’s Analytics to Platform
IHS Markit, a securities data, analytics and solutions vendor, will be incorporating Credit Benchmark’s credit risk analytics in the IHS Markit Securities Finance platform, facilitating additional performance measurement and reporting capabilities for global lending programs, officials say.
“Our collaboration with Credit Benchmark creates the industry’s first solution for managing counterparty credit risk in step with securities lending inventory and loan activity,” says Paul Wilson, managing director and global head of Securities Finance at IHS Markit, in a prepared statement.
The IHS Markit Securities Finance performance measurement platform helps firms compare returns on portfolio assets against “a variety of customizable peer groups,” according to IHS Markit. Using the Credit Benchmark consensus analytics, the offering can now evaluate risk-return exposure based on the credit quality and liquidity of counterparty assets.
Credit Benchmark provides consensus credit risk assessments on corporations, financial institutions, sovereigns and other funds, officials say. Its credit risk inputs are sourced from more than 40 of the world’s leading financial institutions, providing a new unique measure of risk.
BNP Paribas, Citi, JPMorgan & Actinver Join CLSNet
BNP Paribas, Citibank, JPMorgan and Actinver report that they have gone live on CLSNet, an automated bilateral payment netting calculation service of CLS, a specialist in foreign exchange (FX) settlement, processing and data solutions.
CLSNet supports more than 120 currencies operating via a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform, officials say.
“There are now nine market participants live on CLSNet, including Bank of America, Bank of China (Hong Kong), Goldman Sachs, Intesa Sanpaolo and Morgan Stanley,” according to CLS officials.
The CLSNet service standardizes and increases the levels of payment netting in the FX market, in an effort to improve intraday liquidity, operational efficiency and risk mitigation for non-CLS-settled currencies, “many of which are in emerging markets that are growing faster than those in current CLS jurisdictions,” according to CLS.
“CLSNet will enable us to address our wider post-trade processing needs,” says
Héctor Sánchez, head of operations for the Mexican investment advisory firm Actinver, in a prepared statement.
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