Giant Oak, Inc. today launched its highly efficient large scale negative media search tool GOST™ to the financial services community at the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA. GOST™ allows analysts and investigators to perform negative media searches on a tremendous amount of entities quickly and reliably.

"Bank executives must know their customers in order to run efficient businesses and comply with anti-money laundering (AML) requirements," said Giant Oak CEO Gary M. Shiffman.

SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSNC), a global provider of financial services software and software-enabled services, today announced it has completed the acquisition of Citi's Alternative Investor Services Business, a leading provider of hedge fund and private equity fund administration services. SS&C acquired the business unit from Citi for approximately $321 million.

Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday announced that its next-generation cloud ERP solution, Microsoft Dynamics AX, built on and for Microsoft Azure, is now available in 137 markets in 40 languages. The enterprise-class business application brings the power, speed and intelligence of cloud computing to people and organizations to achieve more.

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. has begun migrating clients from SWIFT’s Accord trade confirmation matching service, which SWIFT will retire in 2017, to the Broadridge Matching solution on a hosted basis. 

The first client to transition commenced live operations on Broadridge’s solution in less than two months, enabling the bank to continue its operations without disruption, well ahead of SWIFT’s November 2017 migration deadline.

Pension freedom has created a greater need for at retirement advice, but consumers also have pressing advice needs around reducing debt and protecting their families. Employers provide a pension, but can they play a role in advice too? What about other areas of financial planning, can employers be expected to take the load?

Apptio, the provider of cloud-based Technology Business Management (TBM) software, announced new Contract and Asset planning capabilities for its IT Planning Foundation application. Combined with existing planning functionality, CIOs, IT finance teams and budget owners now have detailed visibility into their resource investments in labor, traditional and cloud-based vendor contracts and IT assets.

Thomson Reuters, the Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI), an affiliate of the Islamic Development Bank Group, and the General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions (CIBAFI), today launched a new Indonesia Islamic Finance Report titled “Prospects For Exponential Growth” at a ceremony in Jakarta. The study was prepared in strategic partnership with CIMB Islamic Bank.

StockViews, the London-based equity research platform, has appointed Thomas Balk, the ex-head of Fidelity International, as Chairman.

“The fintech investment figures seen in the KPMG & CBInsights reports reflect the rude health the industry finds itself in across the globe. Taking a closer look it is evident that most fintech unicorns are in payments and lending. However these multiple trillion dollar sectors are just the first two and there is potentially so much more to come. I firmly expect the next unicorns to arrive in fintech ‘niches’, with each market niche reaching anywhere between $10-50 billion.