Broadway Technology, a leading provider of high-performance software and infrastructure for global financial institutions, announced today that it has closed a $42 million minority investment led by Long Ridge Equity Partners. 

Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business has hired Sarfaraz Ahmed as Market Manager, Finance and Risk, for its growing Asia Pacific (APAC) business.

Ahmed joins Wolters Kluwer from Standard Chartered Bank where he contributed to the bank’s various mandates for the past ten years, including those in risk analytics, policies, processes and systems. In his most recent role at Standard Chartered Ahmed was Stream Lead for the delivery of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9 for the wholesale and private banking businesses. In this role he focused on the methodology and delivery of the models for Expected Credit Loss (ECL) computation while also ensuring data and systems were configured to deliver the required data for IFRS 9, supporting the transformation of the policy and processes impacted by IFRS 9.

Ahmed’s other roles at Standard Chartered included developing risk models in retail and SME businesses and leading the bank’s initiatives in securing internal ratings-based (IRB) accreditation for the bank’s subsidiaries in various countries in the Asia Pacific region. Prior to working at Standard Chartered, Ahmed held business development and analyst positions at FICO and ICICI Bank respectively.

“Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business is experiencing significant growth in the region, with banks turning to us to provide their IFRS 9 solutions in particular,” comments James Stewart, managing director of APAC for Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business. “Sarfaraz brings a wealth of experience to the role and he will be instrumental in ensuring we continue to develop our client centric model across finance and risk.”

Ahmed, who is based in Wolters Kluwer’s Singapore office, holds Masters degrees in Finance from INSEAD and Statistics from The Indian Statistical Institute.

Dolfin, the technology-savvy investment firm, has boosted its research offering with the appointment of Olga Tschekassin as an Economist in its Investment Management team.

Based in London and reporting to CIO Vassilis Papaioannou, Tschekassin will focus on producing macroeconomic research to contribute to Dolfin’s unique blend of human macro analysis and software-powered quantitative analysis in order to generate high-conviction ideas and investment strategies.

Tschekassin joins from Barclays Investment Bank, where she focused on macroeconomic coverage of Germany and wider European thematic research. Prior to that, she worked as an Economist in the European Commission and has also completed stints at the Commerzbank AG and Brussels-based international economics think tank, Bruegel.

Bringing her extensive knowledge of the European macroeconomic environment and quantitative studies to the role, Tschekassin is the latest in a string of hires at the investment firm; Dolfin has grown its research team by 50 per cent in the past 12 months.

Vassilis Papaioannou said of Tschekassin’s appointment: “Dolfin’s approach to research is characterised by a winning blend of macro perspectives and quantitative analysis, underpinned by the right technology and infrastructure to maximise returns for clients. Olga’s skill set and experience will significantly bolster our research output and be of great benefit to our growing client base.”

Senjō Group, a leading privately-held payments platform operator and FinTech investor headquartered in Singapore, has successfully obtained a Payment Institution (PI) license in Lithuania. The company received permission from the Bank of Lithuania to acquire Lithuanian payment institution Finolita Unio. In doing so, the innovative global investor has gained enhanced access to the European payments system via Lithuania.

Senjō Group’s portfolio of companies gives it a presence in more than 30 countries worldwide, and includes fast-growing companies in global electronic payments and financial technology. These companies benefit from the Group’s global footprint, financial capabilities and operational expertise.

According to Gavin Lock, Senjō Group’s COO, Lithuania’s EU-leading regulatory environment for FinTechs played a decisive role in the Group’s decision to establish a presence in the Baltic country: “Lithuania has made rapid progress in streamlining its regulatory framework for FinTech companies recently. The Bank of Lithuania especially, has a positive attitude towards FinTech, and this was one of the key factors in our decision to choose Lithuania as a gateway for strengthening our presence in the European payments ecosystem.”

“Senjō is a new type of FinTech investor, and we are looking forward to growing our core payments business and build our track record of providing scalable and reliable payments solutions for our customers,” Mr. Lock added.

This latest announcement comes on the back of other significant acquisitions by Senjō Group. At the end of 2016, the Group announced that they were acquiring payments innovator Kalixa Group for a total consideration of €29.0 million. This deal includes a completion accounts adjustment that could take the final tally to as much as €35.5 million.

 “For FinTech, Lithuania has all the essential ingredients,” argues Mantas Katinas, General Manager of Invest Lithuania. “Fast, robust IT and banking infrastructure, a wealth of experienced talent, plus great quality of life at a really affordable cost. Moreover, more and more spaces are opening up in Vilnius offering a complete range of services for FinTech companies, from infrastructure and service packages to advice on starting and growing your business, all in a single location,” Mr. Katinas points out.

The Bank of Lithuania provides preliminary advice to financial institution licence enquiries within one week, regarded as one of the fastest turnarounds in the EU. Full authorisation is then issued within 2 to 6 months.

Lithuania has long been considered a recognised global FinTech hub. Payment and electronic money agencies in Lithuania can access the Single European Payments Area (SEPA) through the infrastructure of the Bank of Lithuania, enabling them to avoid the broking services of many commercial banks. Lithuanian regulations now allow the use of non-face-to-face identification systems for FinTech product development, fostering further growth and development.

Rival Systems (Rival), an award-winning provider of trading and risk management software, today announced that it has integrated into its trading platform QuantHouse’s end-to-end ultra-low latency market data feed. The integration of QuantFEED into the Rival Trader and Rival API platforms further strengthens Rival’s multi-asset class offering with one of the fastest, most comprehensive global market data offerings available.

The move enables mutual clients of Rival and QuantHouse to benefit from the ability to seamlessly pull QuantFEED data into Rival’s front-end trading and algorithmic strategy development software, with the flexibility to configure the market data to meet their varying latency and cost requirements. The feed, including hardware, software and telecommunications components, integrates directly into the full functionality of Rival Trader and Rival API, including building and executing algorithms using the ultra-low latency data.

Rival Systems CEO Robert D’Arco said: “As we continue to grow beyond futures and options into the equity space and expand our connectivity to exchanges outside the U.S., we want to ensure that our users have all of the tools at their disposal to benefit from the full power of our sophisticated analytics and trading offering. Integrating with QuantHouse provides a seamless experience for our mutual clients to leverage the unique strengths of our respective technologies.” 

Salloum Abousaleh, Managing Director, Americas, QuantHouse, said: “We are delighted to offer our QuantFEED technology to our mutual clients, who will benefit from the latest in ultra-low latency market data feeds. Rival understands the importance of providing the very best technology to clients so firms can focus on the business of remaining competitive in this fast-moving trading environment, safe in the knowledge that they are optimizing their trading performance to the highest possible standard.” 

Irdeto, the world leader in digital platform security, and Rogue Wave Software, maker of Akana and a leading provider of API Management, API security and Microservices solutions for digital businesses, have announced a partnership to help banks and payment service providers (PSPs) protect their open APIs. The partnership brings to the market a solution to secure open APIs, combining products that offer protection from the API gateway through to the end-user’s device or application. In addition to providing end-to-end protection, the partnership also helps banks and PSPs comply with PSD2’s Access to Account (XS2A) and Common and Secure Communication (CSC) requirements.

The payments and banking industry is undergoing digital disruption as financial institutions open their services to third-parties through open APIs. While this open banking approach creates new business models and fosters innovation, it also introduces a variety of security vulnerabilities. The partnership between Irdeto and Rogue Wave addresses those vulnerabilities by providing services and tools to help protect APIs and applications against a wide variety of attacks, including Denial of Service (DoS), SQL Injections (SQLi), Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks, malware injections and more.

“A successful cyberattack has the potential to permanently damage a financial institution’s reputation,” said Ian Goldsmith, Vice President of Akana Product Management, Rogue Wave. “Protecting open APIs is a critical step banks and PSPs must take to succeed in the ever-evolving financial landscape. Our partnership with Irdeto helps guide the financial industry through digital disruption to securely accelerate innovation.”

While open APIs connect financial enterprises with mobile apps and a large community of developers, these APIs also need to be scalable, reliable and secure. As banks and PSPs expand their services across digital channels they need to become more vigilant about security and protect their APIs against threats and cyber attacks.

“Financial institutions face a growing number of threats as cybercriminals look at different ways to exploit vulnerabilities from APIs,” said David W. Jones, Global Head of Payments & Banking, Irdeto. “In order to adequately protect customers’ sensitive financial information, banks and PSPs must secure their entire infrastructure from the API gateway to the end device or application. By partnering with Rogue Wave, we are providing financial institutions with the peace-of-mind needed to innovate freely.”

Cloakware for Payments & Banking by Irdeto helps banks and PSPs capitalize on digital disruption by taking security to the next level, enabling new services and accelerating innovation. Irdeto’s unique solutions for Payments & Banking help financial institutions prevent MitM attacks and mitigate tampering-based attacks. Irdeto protects and hardens applications and APIs from the client to the server, across all devices, browsers, interfaces and gateways, completely in-line with PSD2 and PCI security standards.

Portware, a FactSet Company and a leading global provider of multi-asset trade automation solutions powered by artificial intelligence (AI), today announced continuous momentum for its Alpha Pro AI-enabled algorithmic trading management solution with over $168 billion notional traded on its platform. In an environment where active managers face increased pressure from passive trading strategies, Alpha Pro has proven to power the intelligent workflows required to enable traders to respond with improved performance while simultaneously lowering the total cost of trade, and of the tools to trade.

Alpha Pro uses predictive analytics to evaluate historical and real-time order flow, helping traders implement the execution schedules that best capture price opportunities and short-term alpha while minimizing market impact. With Alpha Pro, every order that arrives on a trader’s blotter can be analyzed, vetted, and paired with a recommended trading strategy, trade horizon, and recommended algo type selection. Its broker-neutral, data-driven analytics and insights give clients the freedom to use it for analysis alone, or analysis plus execution; when used for both analysis and execution, Alpha Pro optimizes trading schedules to deliver savings relative to proprietary and standard cost benchmarks, allowing traders to manage regulatory and administrative obligations while simultaneously preserving alpha.

Trades totaling more than $168 billion in notional value were analyzed and routed through Alpha Pro between March 2009 and March 2017, resulting in the following performance gains versus industry-standard and proprietary benchmarks:

• Alpha Pro delivered savings across all sectors, especially in small and micro cap stocks where it outperformed by a staggering 63 and 133 basis points (bps) respectively.
• Alpha Pro outperformed on large sized trades where order size was greater than 4% of average daily volume, and was highly effective for trades across liquidity profiles, especially less liquid names.
• Alpha Pro helped traders implement the execution schedules that best capture price opportunities and short-term alpha across 12 sectors, with greater savings for diversified, fund, energy and industrial sectors.
• Overall for orders executed with Alpha Pro, strategies outperformed proprietary and standard cost benchmarks by up to 18 bps. This is particularly important for traders today, who are inundated with large data volumes and must quickly analyze market conditions and execute best trading strategies while ensuring compliance.

“The bionic trading desk is here, and traders need the right support to capitalize on this new reality. In a market that moves in milliseconds, automating manual order steps lets a human trader do what they would if they had unlimited hours to focus on each individual order,” said Alfred Eskandar, CEO of Portware. “Portware’s AI technology supports, rather than replaces, traders, saving them countless hours that do not contribute to performance, and empowering them to focus their energy in areas that do. Our ability to customize and rationalize existing resources lets our clients’ extend the life of their existing technologies to help bring down the total cost of ownership of their trading infrastructure with every trade, for every customer.”

Portware helps traders automate multiple manual steps, integrating predictive analytics and AI-driven intelligent workflows built on top of data warehouses with advanced reporting capabilities. Portware tools use hundreds of points of information—including real-time market data feeds, proprietary data, web crawling, social media listening, and more—freeing traders to focus on critical analysis and more difficult orders.