Interdealer broker TP ICAP Group, a provider of financial markets infrastructure and data, has launched RealQ, a credit trading and data platform intended to help market participants improve how liquidity is “discovered, accessed and transacted” in bond markets, officials say. “Following the acquisition of Neptune Networks by TP ICAP in partnership with nine global banks… Read More >>
Northern Trust Seeks Share Class Relief for ETFs
Custodian Northern Trust has made public its formal application for exemptive relief to offer exchange-traded fund (ETF) share classes “alongside existing mutual fund share classes for certain adviser series within its two sponsored series trusts: Advisers Investment Trust and Datum One Series Trust,” officials say Filing for exemptive relief will help Northern Trust provide asset… Read More >>
Tokenized ETFs Expose Post-Trade Plumbing Hurdles
For middle- and back-office operations teams, the industry’s accelerating push into tokenized assets threatens to fundamentally disrupt legacy post-trade infrastructure. When Franklin Templeton (FT) and Kraken (via its parent company, Payward) announced a strategic collaboration to bring co-designed, tokenized ETFs on-chain, the front office heralded it as a major milestone. The deal expands on Franklin… Read More >>
The Buy Side Is Riding the Tokenization Wave
A new survey-based report finds that buy-side firms are embracing tokenization strategies because they will broaden the investor community by “democratizing access to tokenized assets,” and more than half of survey respondents have a team focused on tokenization-related or digital assets initiatives. The new report, “Tokenization gaining altitude: From pilot projects to industry standard,” is… Read More >>
NBG in Cyprus Deploys Smartstream’s Recs Platform
The National Bank of Greece (NBG) in Cyprus has gone live with a reconciliation solution that leverages artificial intelligence (A.I.) technologies — the Air system from Smartstream — and has replaced four incumbent systems, officials say. The implementation is intended to help the bank’s operational efficiency by “reducing daily manual processing effort and eliminating the… Read More >>
Is Ops Paying a Hidden ‘Manual Processing Tax?’
(Murray Campbell, principal product manager at AutoRek, recently took questions from FTF News about the hidden costs of manual processes that remain in place because firms think they’re more cost-effective than automated solutions. In this Q&A, Campbell makes the case that firms face many ongoing, unknown costs associated with manual processes that carry price tags… Read More >>
SEB Implements BBH’s Account-Opening Connectivity Solution
Private bank Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) reports that it is expanding its account-opening application programming interface (API) connectivity to custodians that want to better serve their clients. Nordic bank SEB was the first to take advantage of it. “Custodians are expected to deliver a faster, more transparent digital onboarding experience, but workflows can still depend… Read More >>
GitHub Incident Could Put Firms at Risk: FINRA
Officials at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) are warning broker-dealers and other securities firms about the potential ripple effects of a cyber-attack upon the popular open source code platform GitHub. The cyber incident “involving GitHub could compromise software supply chains and expose sensitive code across thousands of organizations,” FINRA says in its cyber alert…. Read More >>
SEC Faces Pushback on Public Company Reporting Proposal
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has put forth a proposal to give public companies the option of filing reports semiannually instead of quarterly, streamlining compliance with federal securities laws. However, key industry players are pushing back, arguing that investors could be hurt by information gaps and that market efficiency could take a hit…. Read More >>
BNY Joins the CLSNet Service
Global custodian BNY has gone live on CLSNet, a bilateral payment netting calculation service, in an effort to “optimize and safeguard” FX operations against settlement risk, officials say. CLSNet is part of CLS, a settlement, processing, and data solutions provider for the foreign exchange (FX) industry. “CLSNet standardizes and automates post-trade matching and netting processes… Read More >>
