The FTF News FinTech update includes items about BNP Paribas working with Fidessa, ISDA’s digital version of its CDM, and ARQA partnering with QuantHouse.
SmartStream Creates ‘Innovations Team’
SmartStream Technologies, which characterizes itself as a financial transaction lifecycle management provider, reports that its new “innovations team” is “working with financial institutions to optimise workflows, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and blockchain technologies, in the areas of reconciliations, cash management and fees and expense management.”
The new innovations team has been recruited to “help design new AI and ML techniques to drive down costs and improve work flow efficiencies, taking advantage of advanced data analytics to re-engineer traditional work models across back office processing. Highly skilled members of the team include mathematicians, applied data scientists, computer scientists and Ph.Ds, who will focus on the deployment of AI/ML and blockchain models with financial institutions,” according to a SmartStream statement.
“This includes evaluating optimal AI/ML modelling, data interpolation, running tests, implementations and analysing how AI processes best work within the current product environment by monitoring achievements and optimisation of processes, to enable better business outcomes,” according to SmartStream.
“In the areas of reconciliations and cash management, AI/ML will help to monitor, watch and learn,” the statement continues. “For example, AI models are being used to understand data flows across the back office, ML algorithms are being evaluated to understand cash flows and predict future scenarios. In the areas of fees and invoice management, AI will understand formats and extract and understand information used for processing.’
The new innovations team will be based in Vienna, SmartStream notes.
SmartStream tallies more than 1,500 clients, including “75 of the world’s top 100 banks, 8 of the top 10 asset managers, and 8 of the top 10 custodians.”
BNP Paribas Clients to Get Access to Fidessa Futures & Options Service
Fidessa Group plc, listed on the London Stock Exchange, and French banking giant BNP Paribas report that they will provide the bank’s buy-side clients with access to Fidessa’s futures and options workstation.
The partnership will allow BNP Paribas to “meet the needs of an increasing number of buy-side clients who are looking for specialised execution services,” the new partners say in a statement.
BNP Paribas originally implemented Fidessa’s derivatives trading platform in 2016 to support its global futures and options trading operations from hubs in Chicago, London and Hong Kong, according to the statement.
“Under this new agreement, BNP Paribas will distribute Fidessa’s derivatives trading platform, branded Cortex Listed, to its institutional clients across all regions, providing them with fully-hosted execution capabilities. In addition, BNP Paribas will have the ability to offer its clients access to the Fidessa GT multi-broker workstation … access across global markets,” officials say. BNP Paribas reports a presence in 74 countries, with more than 192,000 employees, including more than 146,000 in Europe.
ISDA Launches Digital Version of Common Data Model
International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) reports that it has published an initial digital representation of the Common Domain Model (CDM), which enables ISDA members “to access and test the model on various new technologies,” officials say.
The ISDA CDM 1.0 “provides a standard digital representation of events and actions that occur during the life of a derivatives trade, expressed in a machine-readable format,” officials say. “Using this common standard will enhance consistency and facilitate interoperability across firms and platforms, irrespective of the programing language ultimately used for each technology.”
The digital version of the ISDA CDM is “a major step forward in efforts to reduce complexity and create greater efficiency in the derivatives market. Each firm has historically used its own unique representations of events and processes, which has severely curtailed the potential for technologies to interoperate. By applying the standard representations within the CDM, firms will essentially be following the same blueprint,” says Scott O’Malia, ISDA’s CEO in a prepared statement.
The ISDA CDM 1.0 encompasses interest rate and credit derivatives products, “along with an initial set of core business events, including ‘new transaction’, ‘rate reset’, ‘partial termination’, ‘allocation’, ‘novation’ and ‘compression’. The release includes a reference implementation of the model using the Java programing language, and illustrative representations in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON),” officials say.
ISDA officials say the CDM is available for download via the ISDA member section of the ISDA website. ISDA officials are looking to collect feedback during the testing process “to refine and fine-tune the model,” officials add.
ARQA’s OMS Adds Euro Markets Via QuantHouse
ARQA Technologies, which develops, implements and maintains software platforms for automating operations of financial institutions, reports that it “continues developing solutions for the European markets for complex trading infrastructures, powered by QuantHouse data and hosting services.”
The ARQA/QuantHouse combined effort is “twofold,” the firm says: “one is feeding ARQA OMS [order management system] with fast, well-normalized and truly global market data. The other is hosting ARQA OMS at QuantHouse’s data centre in London. The latter enables clients to use ARQA OMS as a service and simplifies connectivity to exchanges and execution brokers who are members of the QuantHouse API Ecosystem.”
ARQA’s OMS has been installed at seven banks and broker-dealers trading globally, the vendor says.
ARQA Technologies has clients at more than 200 banks and sell- and buy-side companies. The company says it has “points of presence” in Novosibirsk, Moscow and London.
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