Power. We always want it, we waste too much of it and we’re endlessly re-thinking where we get it from. But as in every other major industry, emerging technologies, shifting customer expectations, and now dramatic shifts in global energy economics are pushing energy utilities to rethink their century-old business and compliance models.

Disruption has arrived in the utility sector with a vengeance, as the ways we produce, transmit, distribute and consume power are being utterly transformed.

Growing security concerns, more stringent regulatory requirements and the costs and time required for each financial transaction are driving significant changes to the global payments space. Global transactions innovator, Saxo Payments, is meeting these challenges head on with Saxo Payments Banking Marketplace, a solution that empowers FinTech businesses to deliver instant and low-cost cross border payments capabilities to their merchant clients. Saxo Payments, a subsidiary of Saxo Bank, selected Oracle FLEXCUBE on Oracle Managed Cloud Services as the foundation for this new service.

SmartStream, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM^®) specialist, today announced the release of TLM Reconciliations Premiumv.2.5 – this new version provides a new reconciliation package for Short Term Investment Funds (STIF) and provides enriched services for ETD (Exchange Traded Derivatives), OTC (Over the Counter) and NAV (Net Asset Value) reconciliations.

Mobile payments specialist, Bell ID, today announces that its host card emulation (HCE) mobile solution has been certified by three of the largest global payments schemes. Bell ID is the first vendor to receive approval from three schemes for its HCEplatform, offering its customers the broadest range of options available on the market today.

Erste Securities Polska S.A., a leading Polish institutional broker, has chosen SunGard’s market access solution to improve connectivity and algorithmic trading and harness the High Volume Provider Program recently launched by Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) to expand and enhance service to clients.

Australian-based Metamako, the leading specialist in deterministic ultra-low latency devices for the trading community, today announced a collaboration with M/A-COM Technology Solutions Inc. (“MACOM”) (NASDAQ: MTSI), a leading supplier of high-performance analog RF, microwave and optical semiconductor products.

 TestPlant, the maker of the eggPlant range of software test automation tools, today announced that its data indicates software quality departments in the banking sector are facing scalability challenges when testing applications due to the ever-growing range of devices and browsers. Conflicts between the need to roll out new applications and updates quickly, and the need to adequately test these applications, present an insurmountable challenge if manual testing practices continue.

 Calypso Technology Inc., the standard for treasury and capital markets software, has successfully deployed its award-winning solution at leading emerging and frontier markets investment bank 

Ancoa, providers of contextual surveillance and insightful analytics for exchanges, regulators, buy and sell-side firms, today announced the successful integration of Twilio, the leading cloud communications platform, with its surveillance platform, adding transactional voice surveillance, for voice initiated trades, to Ancoa’s suite of capabilities. Ancoa leverages Twilio’s software-based communications to make enhanced analysis of telephone conversations and text messages available to all Ancoa customers.

Yesterday saw the publication of ESMA’s long-awaited report on the technical standards for MiFID II / MiFIR. As well as reviewing every single word of this impressive tome – 1,532 pages spread across three documents – we should consider the wider scope and take note of what the report does not cover too.