Our FinTech roundup also covers Quorsus hiring from Goldman Sachs, Aspect Capital & OpenGamma, and GTreasury’s Coprocess acquisition.
Northern Trust to Offer Venn from Two Sigma
Northern Trust is expanding its relationship with quantitative analytics solutions provider Two Sigma so that it can offer the Venn cloud-based investment analytics platform to its clients, officials say.
The Venn analytics and research support have been designed for asset allocators.
“Venn provides analytics on a pre-trade or post-trade basis,” Paul Fahey, head of investment data science at Northern Trust, tells FTF News. “Pre-trade, its forecast capabilities allow users to predict performance relative to benchmarks, expected returns based on capital market assumptions and, by shocking various global indices, see the impact on investment portfolios. On a post-trade basis Venn enables asset allocators to combine qualitative views with quantitative insights to measure managers’ actual performance against manager expectations or claims.”
Asset allocators including endowments, foundations, family office and other sophisticated investors will use Venn’s analytics to see if “their existing managers are delivering against their mandates, quantifying how much value they are delivering, the potential impact of new managers on the allocator’s risk/return profile and any allocator looking to provide transparency into the effectiveness of their managers alpha generation capabilities,” Fahey says.
In addition, Northern Trust is facilitating data flows to the Venn platform via application programming interfaces (APIs), constituting a new integration between Northern Trust’s front office solutions and investment risk and analytical services offerings, officials say.
“The Two Sigma relationship already supports a number of mutual clients and is an extension of Northern Trust Whole Office, an approach that integrates Northern Trust’s architecture alongside innovative partners, facilitating client access to new technologies, services, and solutions,” according to officials.
The partnership is key to Northern Trust’s strategy “to provide integrated products, services, and technology across the whole office,” officials say.
“We are excited to expand our relationship with Northern Trust, bringing Venn’s capabilities to a broader group of sophisticated asset allocator clients,” says Jake Dwyer, general manager of Venn by Two Sigma, in a prepared statement.
Quorsus Taps Goldman Sachs for New Director
Andrew Pinnington
Financial services consultancy Quorsus has hired Andrew Pinnington, a former Goldman Sachs International executive director, to become the new director and regulatory reporting subject matter expert for the regulatory reporting practice.
“Quorsus’ regulatory reporting practice provides specialized advice and insights across the post-trade technology, data, and compliance sectors while incorporating and shaping industry best practices,” according to officials at the London-based consultancy. Pinnington’s responsibilities will include “leading the development of the regulatory reporting practice and serving as a trusted advisor in Quorsus’ ongoing and future client initiatives.”
While at Goldman Sachs, Pinnington helped oversee derivatives regulatory operations, managing 30 members of a European derivatives reporting team. “In this role, Andrew’s organizational design and performance improvement skills played a crucial role, as he instigated a front to back review of the firm’s reporting obligations and subsequently significantly improved the accuracy and completeness of the firm’s reporting,” according to Quorsus.
At Quorsus, Pinnington will lead the regulatory reporting practice, officials say.
Aspect Capital to Track Margin via OpenGamma Analytics
Aspect Capital is expanding its use of derivatives analytics from OpenGamma, a margin optimization solutions provider, so that the investment manager can better track the consumption of margin across multiple markets and prime brokers, officials say.
The firm has been using OpenGamma’s analytics to track risk exposure and maintain fund liquidity since 2018, officials say.
The regulatory landscape for margin is evolving and Aspect Capital is diversifying it product range and seeking opportunities via new trading venues. “For example, futures and options contracts trade on local country exchanges, and each exchange has its own specific approach for calculating derivatives margin,” according to OpenGamma officials.
OpenGamma’s margin replication is “a valuable tool to help optimize cash usage in a high cost, low-interest rate environment,” says Jake Thornton, head of market risk at Aspect Capital, in a prepared statement.
“Our expanded partnership with Aspect Capital will broaden the delivery of operational efficiencies for their derivatives trading by tracking the consumption of margin across a wide range of markets and multiple prime brokers,” says Peter Rippon, CEO of OpenGamma, in a prepared statement.
GTreasury Targets Treasurers via Coprocess Acquisition
GTreasury is hoping that corporate treasurers will be interested in the treasury and risk management platform vendor’s acquisition of Coprocess, an intercompany netting solutions vendor.
The acquisition is intended to give corporate treasurer customers the chance to “significantly streamline their settlement processes,” and cut costs via the netting offerings of Coprocess, officials say.
The addition of intercompany netting to the GTreasury platform “can help cut costs by reducing payments and FX volumes, and add new automated efficiencies” to treasury workflows, officials add.
Coprocess’s multilateral netting offerings and GTreasury’s cash, payments, foreign exchange (FX), and risk management capabilities will be part of fully integrated solutions to come, says Renaat Ver Eecke, CEO of GTreasury, in a prepared statement.
“The complexities of doing business across countries and across banks continues to grow, and the technologies that treasurers rely on must keep up with that pace. Acquiring Coprocess does exactly that for our clients,” Ver Eecke says.
In addition, “real-time intercompany reconciliation capabilities deliver visibility into intercompany transactions, interest, loans and treasury transactions — eliminating mismatches and facilitating automatic reporting,” according to GTreasury officials.
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