Our free roundup also covers news about: Finastra's LIBOR calculator; OpenDoor Securities; TrackInsight & Nasdaq; CLS's new client; and INTL FCStone's new name.
Murex & Duco to Offer End-To-End Recs Solution
Duco, a provider of self-service reconciliation services, and Murex, a provider of trading, risk and processing processes for treasury and capital markets, report that they will jointly provide clients with a “comprehensive data reconciliation solution enabling improved automation and straight through processing across a range of asset classes.”
Through their joint efforts, data sources that are “natively available” in Duco’s cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform will be accessible to Murex clients from the sell side or the buy side to “perform key reconciliations related to their security, collateral, cash positions and progressively additional financial objects,” the vendors say in their statement.
The combined effort is intended to provide Murex MX.3 with:
• Plug and play support: end-users can upload data from MX.3 into Duco’s SaaS platform to run reconciliation operations;
• Machine learning: Duco’s machine learning functions are applied to reconciliation setups in order to reduce exceptions and manual interventions;
• And workflow support: exceptions can be labelled and assigned to individuals or groups as end-users take action via the MX.3 dashboard
“In the current environment, reducing operational risk by improving data integrity and removing manual work has arguably never been more important,” says Christian Nentwich, CEO of Duco, in a prepared statement.
‘Fusion LIBOR Transition Calculator’ Launches
Vendor Finastra has release its Fusion LIBOR Transition Calculator service targeting banks that want to calculate alternate reference rates (ARR) or risk-free rates (RFR), officials say.
The calculation service functions separately from Finastra’s Fusion Loan IQ, a commercial lending solution, officials say.
“Built on FusionFabric. cloud, Finastra’s open innovation platform, the calculator’s open API [application programming interface] facilitates the integration with systems that don’t yet have a solution in place for calculating ARR/RFR rates,” according to the vendor.
“There is no doubt the LIBOR transition is the biggest change the market has seen in lending over the last 20-to-30 years. The shift away from LIBOR has become even more concerning against a backdrop of economic disruption. The need for a flexible service that can expand over time is more important than ever,” says Robert Downs, senior principal product manager, corporate and syndicated lending at Finastra, in a prepared statement.
The new calculator service will access the ARR/RFR from “external official sources such as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for SOFR. It then calculates compounded in arrears rates and daily non-cumulative compounded rates, along with corresponding interest accrual amounts for a set of inputs,” according to Finastra. “Depending upon the rate method chosen, the calculator has the flexibility to calculate the daily compounding rates for the whole period or only for the end date.
OpenDoor Launches Venue for OTR U.S. Treasuries
OpenDoor Securities, a broker-dealer and financial technology company, has launched “the first ‘all-to-all’ marketplace for on-the-run (OTR) U.S. Treasuries,” officials say.
“The anonymous order book will be the first U.S. Treasury venue to offer non-discriminatory pricing in benchmarks regardless of an account’s designation. The rollout is in direct response to voiced concerns regarding the negative impact of information arbitrage as well as the dearth of liquidity experienced during times of stress on traditional trading venues,” according to OpenDoor officials.
“The ability for institutional investors to source and trade large blocks of OTRs directly and anonymously on the OpenDoor platform will not only improve execution quality but will also provide an additional mechanism for market participants to clear risk without market impact,” officials add.
Based in Jersey City, N.J., OpenDoor’s client base consists of pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, primary dealers, asset managers, hedge funds, and trading firms, officials say.
TrackInsight Picks Nasdaq as Its Nor-Am Distributor
TrackInsight, an exchange traded funds (ETF) analytics platform, has made Nasdaq its exclusive distributor for North America. TrackInsight characterizes itself as platform “dedicated to ETF search, analysis and selection aimed at professional investors.”
TrackInsight also spotlights the 100,00-plus “unique users and 2,500 qualified professional investors” using the platform and reports that that it is the information source for more 6,000 exchange traded funds.
The arrangement with Nasdaq is meant to ”accelerate its presence in North America” and “promote the usage of the platform amongst its network of investment professionals,” the vendor says in a statement.
Mexican Pension Fund to Use CLSSettlement
CLS, a foreign exchange settlement, processing and data vendor, reports that Afore Citibanamex has become the first Mexican pension fund to make use of CLSSettlement, the group’s payment-versus-payment (PvP) FX settlement service, as a third-party participant.
Afore Citibanamex is Mexico’s second largest pension fund and a founding organization in the administration system for retirement funds, per CLS. Mexico “along with Canada and the U.S., leads the way among the 22 largest pension funds globally in terms of growth in assets under management. In 2019, Mexican pension funds managed USD237 billion, up 7.3 percent from USD117 billion in 2009,” according to CLS.
INTL FCStone Changes Name to StoneX Group
The broker known as INTL FCStone Inc., a provider of execution, post-trade settlement, clearing and custody services, is rebranding itself as StoneX Group Inc., after a majority of shareholders recently approved the change.
The rebranding “signals the next phase for the firm as a unified financial services network connecting clients to global financial markets,” officials say.
The name change takes effect July 6, 2020, and the company will be traded under the symbol SNEX. “The StoneX Group name and its trade name ‘StoneX’ carries forward the foundation established by Saul Stone in 1924 to today’s modern financial services firm,” officials say.
“Our firm has experienced transformational growth in recent years – in terms of the breadth and depth of our offering, our technology platforms and our global client base. This re-brand will help us better define and communicate our strategic focus on driving innovation and digitalization in the global markets going forward,” says Sean O’Connor, CEO, for the StoneX Group.
The StoneX Group provides connections to 36 derivatives exchanges, 175 foreign exchange (FX) markets, global securities marketplaces, and bi-lateral liquidity venues via its network of digital platforms and staff, officials say.
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