In other news, a whistleblower gets $17 million, a key GBST client renews, BNPP Securities Services embraces digital custody, and a new SEF is born.
MAS & Google Launch Climate FinTech Initiative
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Google Cloud report that they are launching an initiative “to drive the innovation, incubation, and scaling of climate FinTech solutions in Asia.”
The Point Carbon Zero Program is “a collaboration under MAS’ Project Greenprint,” that will spur climate FinTech solutions to “bolster financial sector access to accurate and granular climate-related data, for more efficient deployment of capital toward green and sustainable projects,” officials say.
For its part, Google Cloud is slated to launch the “world’s first open-source cloud platform dedicated to climate finance,” officials say.
Fintech vendors will be asked to propose “solutions to address a range of climate finance problem statements co-crafted by stakeholders from the financial sector and real economy,” officials say.
Then 100 solutions “will be shortlisted for further development and tested with a pool of 1,000 financial institutions,” officials say.
Key features of the Program are:
- Mentorship and funding;
- Access to data: “Participants can leverage the aggregated climate disclosure, environmental and public utilities data that Project Greenprint aims to collect, and over 200 public datasets spanning different sectors that are hosted by Google Cloud;”
- Participants can cut their carbon footprints; and
- Data sharing: “New climate-related datasets generated by these solutions can be made available to Project Greenprint’s partners, subject to data owners’ consent.”
Whistleblower Gets a $17M Award from the SEC
SEC officials report that the regulator has handed out an award of more than $17 million to a whistleblower “who provided information and assistance in a covered action and related action.”
The whistleblower’s information helped “SEC staff to open a new investigation that led to the successful covered action. The whistleblower also provided SEC enforcement staff with detailed information and documents throughout the investigation. Further, because the same information led to the success of the related action, the whistleblower is also entitled to an award based on amounts collected in the related action,” according to the official annoucement.
“Today’s award underscores the SEC’s commitment to rewarding meritorious whistleblowers who provide valuable information and exemplary cooperation that advance the agency’s enforcement efforts,” says Creola Kelly, chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, in an official statement.
The SEC, which has rewarded 278 individuals with approximately $1.3 billion since 2012, makes its payments via an investor protection fund established by Congress financed entirely through monetary sanctions paid to the SEC by securities law violators, officials say.
More about the whistleblower program is at www.sec.gov/whistleblower .
U.K.’s Novia Financial Renews GBST Contract
U.K. wealth management firm Novia Financial has renewed its contract with securities operations vendor GBST as Novia intends to “scale assets and client numbers” to meet growth goals, officials say.
GBST will continue to provide Novia, based in Bath, England, with the Composer suite of front and back-office systems that supports the firm’s administration of wealth management service, officials say.
“Novia will continue to benefit from GBST’s ongoing investment in its technology, including the modern API [application programming interface] enabled microservices architecture that underpins Composer, which supports over three million accounts and £180 billion assets under management within the UK,” officials say.
“The platform market is at an inflection point. If it is to support adviser firms in meeting the evolving needs of their clients, it’s imperative that platforms find ways to offer more flexible technology solutions that are increasingly digital, data-driven, and heavily integrated into other technologies,” says Patrick Mill, CEO at Novia, in a prepared statement.
BNPP Securities Services Taps METACO & Fireblocks
BNP Paribas Securities Services is getting into the digital custody services game via partnerships fintech providers Fireblocks and METACO, officials say.
The arrangement will lead to the development of digital asset custody offerings so that BNPP Securities Services clients can “issue, transfer and safekeep regulated digital assets efficiently and securely,” officials say.
“The bank has selected Fireblocks as its hot wallet, tokenization, and connectivity infrastructure layer. As a first step, BNP Paribas Securities Services will use Fireblocks’ solution in their ongoing experimentation with the settlement and custody of regulated security tokens,” according to an official statement. In fact, BNP Paribas Securities Services has already worked with Fireblocks “in a live experiment on the settlement and custody of a non-listed digital bond in the French market.”
In addition, the bank will be integrating METACO’s “digital asset custody and orchestration platform into its existing infrastructure,” officials say. “The platform will underpin the bank’s institutional custody offering and unify governance across its multiple systems, allowing institutional clients to store, issue and settle digital securities alongside their traditional assets.”
“Our objective is to offer our clients a single view of all these different types of assets for complete transparency, greater operational efficiency and risk management,” says Wayne Hughes, head of digital assets at BNP Paribas Securities Services, in a statement.
BNP Paribas Securities Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of the BNP Paribas Group, offers multi-asset post-trade and asset servicing solutions for buy and sell-side market participants, corporates and issuers, officials say.
CFTC Approves AEGIS SEF
A new swap execution facility (SEF) is on the market as the Aegis SEF, LLC, has been granted its registration as a SEF by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The regulator has issued an order of registration for AEGIS SEF, which is a Delaware limited liability company headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas and an affiliate of AEGIS CTA, LLC, a commodity trading advisor, officials say.
“After review of AEGIS SEF’s application and associated exhibits, the CFTC determined AEGIS SEF demonstrated its ability to comply with the CEA provisions and CFTC regulations applicable to SEFs,” according to the CFTC’s announcement. “The terms and conditions of the order require, among other things, that AEGIS SEF comply with all provisions of the CEA and the CFTC’s regulations applicable to SEFs.”
The approval for AEGIS SEF means that there will be 20 SEFs registered with the CFTC, officials note.
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