Spent a great few days in Madrid last week at the International Trader Forum. The event brings together key figures from the buy and sell-side to debate the current and future likely shape of the industry. One of the key predictions this time was the rise of a new type of sales trader. One that could do all the relationship stuff of before, but was also armed with new tools that enable them to source liquidity in size and provide real colour on any given trading situation.

Paysera, a global payments system that enables real-time international payment acceptance, and Alpha Payments Cloud, connecting transaction, risk and commerce vendors with merchants and financial institutions on one platform, have today announced a new partnership.

With the world’s attention turning to the post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda later this month, the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, in collaboration with News Deeply, today launched the Inclusion Hub, an innovative pop-up content portal featuring original reporting and educational content on advancing susta

 Colt today announced the addition of TraderServe to Colt PrizmNet, a financial services extranet connecting providers of financial content to Capital Markets firms. TraderServe will provide access to Algoguard - the leading validation engine for MiFID II compliance - via PrizmNet from next month. The service will be available to all Capital Markets participants who require the ability to demonstrate compliance for algorithm testing under MiFID II, irrespective of location.

 RIMES, the leading provider of managed data services for the buy-side, today announced it has added ChinaBond to its catalogue of more than 150 data partners. With over 50 indices, a partnership with ChinaBond demonstrates RIMES’ ever-increasing provision of data sources across asset classes globally.

A new study commissioned by BCSG has revealed that the relationship between retail banks and their small and medium sized business (SMEs) customers is weakening. The research demonstrates that the shift to digital services has increased the risk of switching financial service provider and that banks must move towards a model that drives engagement through business critical insight and services to defend against SME churn.

Mindtree, a leading digital transformation and technology services company, today announced that it has partnered with MetricStream, the market leader in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), to help simplify regulatory compliance for financial firms. Mindtree will leverage MetricStream’s Zaplet, a cloud-based open platform to build, deploy and manage a variety of GRC applications for financial firms globally.  

N2N Connect, providers of enterprise-wide integrated trading solutions to stock broking firms and banks in Asia-Pacific and Ancoa, providers of contextual surveillance and insightful analytics for exchanges, regulators, buy and sell-side firms, have signed an OEM agreement to offer Ancoa’s full breadth of surveillance capabilities to N2N’s banking and brokerage clients.

Jointly, Ancoa and N2N Connect bring proven market surveillance capabilities and unrivalled market connectivity and information to market participants in Asia Pacific.

SQR Systems, a London based cyber security start-up is launching a new mobile encryption application, CEERUS.