Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced that the Thomson Reuters SEF has completed certification testing for FX non-deliverable forwards (NDF) clearing by LCH.Clearnet’s ForexClear service. This is part of Thomson Reuters commitment to achieving the highest standards of best practice across its platforms.

Subject to standard regulatory notifications, this certification provides Thomson Reuters with the future ability to offer users of the Thomson Reuters SEF comprehensive functionality when providing access to central clearing of FX NDF transactions and enables Thomson Reuters customers to simplify risk management by removing the counterparty credit risk that comes with a non-centrally cleared model.

LCH.Clearnet’s certification programme is designed to ensure that customers using approved execution venues will benefit from highly integrated workflow for the clearing of FX NDF trades. The conformance testing carried out by LCH.Clearnet ensures that the two companies will be able to provide seamless communication across the trade lifecycle to these customers.

“Impending regulations on capital requirements will increase the relative costs of settling non-centrally cleared derivatives trades bilaterally. We recognise this cost, along with the benefits of removing counterparty credit risk, will naturally drive demand for FX NDF clearing even before it is mandated,” said Jodi Burns, global head of regulation and post-trade at Thomson Reuters. “Working closely with LCH.Clearnet, our objective was to ensure we meet the highest standards of performance and integration in providing access to central clearing to our customers on the Thomson Reuters SEF.”

The Thomson Reuters SEF currently handles almost two thirds of the market’s total average daily volumes of FX NDF bank-to-client SEF transactions. It allows customers to trade FX options, non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) and NDF swaps electronically through multibank request-for-quote liquidity and an anonymous central limit order book. Designed specifically to meet FX trading, clearing, and reporting obligations as mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, the Thomson Reuters SEF provides a complete, end-to-end workflow solution with straight-through processing and settlement. Volumes on the Thomson Reuters SEF have increased by more than 20 percent in 2015.

LCH.Clearnet is a global, multi-asset class clearing house, serving major exchanges and platforms as well as a range of OTC markets.

Misys, the leading financial software company, has been named a “Major Global Player” in the latest Global Banking Platform Deals report from Forrester Research. To achieve this recognition, Misys signed 101 new and extended banking deals in 2014, spread across three major regions. Of these, 22 were new named banks.

Forrester’s research report, “Customer Experience In Banking Needs More Than Just Channels”, was published as a result of Forrester’s Global Banking Platform Deals Survey 2014, which surveyed 32 vendors of globally and regionally deployed banking platforms about their 2014 deals. The report shows which vendors have had success in 2014 based on the number of deals achieved and the number of regions where they were located.

“A hundred and one banking deals in 2014 is phenomenal. These are banks either joining the Misys community, or extending their business with us as a trusted provider and we’re delighted to be working with them”, said Mark Yamin-Ali, Global Sales Director, Retail Banking, Misys. “The outside-in banking approach, which FusionBanking Essence facilitates, enables banks to create a truly customer-centric organisation, meeting the needs of millions of individuals. As banks continue to move away from monolithic, legacy solutions, they will turn to agile solutions like FusionBanking Essence.” 

This recognition adds to the accolade that Misys received from another prominent analyst firm this year, with FusionBanking Essence being named a ‘Leader’ in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for International Retail Core Banking, in November 2014.

The Misys FusionBanking offering is ideal for helping banks achieve the best customer experience possible, as it delivers a solution and roadmap to transform their operations from the “outside-in”. This means engineering the bank and processes around the needs of the consumer – it’s all about them.

The success of this approach is reflected in the popularity of its flagship retail banking solution, Misys FusionBanking Essence. Several new clients have licensed the solution in the last six months including Yoma Bank, one of the largest privately-owned banks in Myanmar, as well as two new challenger banks in Europe. Once these implementations are complete, FusionBanking Essence will be live across 31 countries around the world.

Path Solutions, the world’s leading Islamic financial software company, is pleased to announce that it has been awarded ‘Best Global Islamic Banking Technology Provider’ at the 2015 Global Banking & Finance Review Awards.

Since its inception in 2011, the Global Banking & Finance Review Awards reflect the innovation, achievement, strategy, progressive and inspirational changes taking place within the global financial community. The awards were created to recognize companies which are prominent in particular areas of expertise and excellence within the financial world.

Mohammed Kateeb, Path Solutions’ Group Chairman & CEO said, “We are thrilled at receiving global recognition in today’s harsh, hyper-competitive landscape. It’s a true source of pride for the entire team. We see this additional accolade as a remarkable vote of confidence to our business and our continued industry commitment”. Kateeb added, “We are committed to creating value for our clients and building long term relationships, and I am pretty confident that it augurs well for the future”.

Wanda Rich, Chief Editor of Global Banking & Finance Review said, “We congratulate Path Solutions on winning this prestigious award. For more than 25 years, Path has built a great reputation as a leading Islamic software house; the company has systematically and passionately invested in human capital and cutting-edge software solutions to deliver on its commitments. That’s how industry-leading reputations are formed”.

The Global Banking & Finance Review is a UK-based online portal for informative, independent news within the financial community. This is reflected through a large range of in-depth contributions to reveal insights from numerous perspectives for a variety of sectors such as Banking, FOREX Trading, Asset Management, Corporate Governance, Islamic Finance, Project Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions, Technology, Tax and Accounting and Inward Investment; all under one global umbrella.

Misys, the leading financial software company, has signed an agreement with DEVnet GmbH, the experts in technology-driven business transformation, to join the Misys InFusion Partner Programme. This formalises an ongoing, successful collaboration between both companies.

Under the agreement, DEVnet will provide clients with consultancy, integration and development expertise in the DACH region (German, Austria and Switzerland), as well as UK, Italy and Poland, specialising in Risk, Capital Markets and Investment Management.

DEVnet’s passion for innovation, as well as its extensive project experience, have been crucial to its success in providing solutions throughout the entire value chain from IT to business. This agreement ensures that DEVnet clients will also benefit from the unique, modular, open architecture of Misys FusionFabric, which closely aligns with clients’ business goals and delivers agility and competitive edge.

“DEVnet believes in technology-driven business transformation”, states Andreas Kokott, CEO of DEVnet. “Today’s regulatory requirements and competitive pressures demand faster, cost-efficient analytics development and deployment. The modular, open architecture of Misys FusionFabric will help us address this while maximising our business expertise and our transformational approach. This is why Misys is such a promising match for us. We are looking forward to a long and productive working relationship.”

Brian Gibson, VP Partners and Ecosystem, Misys, adds: “DEVnet has a strong business focus combined with in-depth knowledge of our markets within Europe. its approach to risk management, analytics and integration fits in well with our broad portfolio of solutions and provides our clients with a powerful and distinctive proposition.”

Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced its appointment by S&P Dow Jones Indices, one of the world’s leading index providers, to provide end-of-day as well as terms and conditions data for the market’s first ever index that tracks debt of the S&P 500 companies. Thomson Reuters Pricing Service (TRPS), an independent pricing service covering over 2.5 million global fixed income securities, derivatives and bank loans, will work closely with S&P DJI to help them meet their valuation and reporting requirements for the S&P 500 Bond Index.

The S&P 500 Bond Index is priced in real-time throughout the day and directly corresponds to movement in the U.S. bond market. The Index offers previously unavailable intraday transparency to the pricing of debt on America’s most influential companies. 

The S&P 500 Bond Index will deliver side-by-side analysis of the performance differential between U.S. equity and bond markets. TRPS will work with S&P DJI to power the Index. TRPS is supported by experienced evaluators who apply consistent pricing methodologies, reflecting up-to-date market conventions and procedures in order to provide transparency into the inputs and techniques used to value illiquid and harder-to-value securities.

“We are delighted that S&P Dow Jones Indices has chosen to use our fixed income end of day pricing in conjunction with our comprehensive and high-quality bond terms and conditions data to act as constituents for their new Bond Index,” said Marion Leslie, managing director, Pricing & Reference Services at Thomson Reuters. “Thomson Reuters is committed to partnering with the market’s leading service providers, ensuring market participants are able to benefit from our award winning content via multiple partners, platforms and applications.”

“We are extremely pleased to be working with Thomson Reuters to provide end-of-day & terms and conditions data for our S&P 500 Bond Index,” said J.R. Rieger, head of Fixed Income for S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Thomson Reuters Pricing & Reference Services has a proven track record of delivering consistently accurate and transparent data which will allow us to offer the most comprehensive and up to date information to investors.”  

TRPS is a global solution that covers over 2.5 million fixed income securities, derivatives and loans, priced daily, including: collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), asset-backed securities (ABS), commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), credit default swaps (CDS), corporates, US municipals, and more. Prices are delivered throughout the day or at market closing times around the world depending on the asset class, with supporting commentary to provide insight on the day’s events. You can find more information on Thomson Reuters Pricing Service here: http://prdcommunity.com/index.php/solutions/valuation-services.

On 16^th June, Lombard Risk Management plc (Lombard Risk), a leading provider of integrated regulatory reporting and compliance and collateral management solutions for the financial services industry, hosted its 2^nd Annual Regulatory Update Conference.  Held at the Andaz Hotel in London, the conference attracted double last year’s audience with 300 registered delegates from 170 firms.

This year’s conference was designed to bring the audience up-to-date with short, medium and longer term regulatory requirements, highlighting the key issues firms need to consider to meet the ‘new normal’ in a fast-changing regulatory environment.  The event included two key panel sessions and a small exhibition featuring the British Bankers Association, Katalysis, Planixs, SunGard, PWC, Accenture and Oracle.

The Broadridge Mobile solution will enable Cetera Financial Institutions to rapidly deploy a distinctively branded, unified advisor and client experience while leveraging a proven enterprise mobile technology platform. It is designed to increase collaboration, optimize data management and deliver an integrated experience to financial advisors and investors on a single global platform.

"Delivering information and engaging customers when and how they want to be served is critical to enhancing the experience investors have with our financial institutions," said Catherine Bonneau, Chief Executive Officer, Cetera Financial Institutions and Cetera Investment Services. "Engaging Broadridge to deliver these services for both advisors and investors is just one of many steps we are taking to deliver enhanced resources and capabilities to our financial institution clients and their retail investors." 

Broadridge Mobile provides real-time market, portfolio and account information and trading tools for funds, equities and options. The solution also offers document sharing with advisors and clients and comprehensive client search and reporting, account inquiry and book of business analysis, all on a global multi-language and multi-currency platform.

"As demonstrated by Cetera and other Broadridge Mobile clients, a smart, thoughtfully crafted mobile strategy is the next chapter in wealth management technology," said Traci Mabrey, head of Wealth Solutions, Broadridge Global Technology and Operations. "The advisor-client relationship is at the center of firms' mobility plans, and we will continue to spur our evolution with that in mind. With a mobile platform, advisors have a huge opportunity to provide a better customer experience, increase productivity and even adopt new models of doing business." 

A select panel of senior superannuation and wealth management industry representatives has nominated simplicity, identifying customer needs, developing holistic services and providing clients with control as some of the key ingredients to future wealth management business success

Bravura Solutions Pty Limited (Bravura) – in conjunction with FST Media – recently hosted an executive round table entitled Exceeding Expectations of Tomorrows Wealth Management Customers.

Led by Bravura’s Head of Strategic Engagement John Burke, the event brought together heads in technology, digital, marketing, strategy and operations to discuss strategies for managing and exceeding the expectations of tomorrow’s customers.

John Burke noted that there was broad agreement among the panel that future success in the wealth management business would be achieved by those that developed direct and responsive relationships with their customers, greatly simplified their products and made the customer journey easier than ever before.

Hayden King, COO, BT Investment Management, commented: “Banks have a lot of clients, but they also have a lot of complexity. As an industry we have consolidated because the money was there, but how we engage with our customers is the biggest question.”

Possible strategies discussed by panel members included integrating superannuation and insurance with banking, providing a consolidated, holistic view of a customers’ financial situation and easy portal integration to third party applications.

John Burke elaborated: “In tomorrow’s world, utilising technology that makes the complex simple will prove critical. It will deliver a defensive strategy against disruptive start-ups, support innovation in the retirement income space and allow providers to become more effective in educating members enabling them to make informed decisions about their investments.”

The panel recognised that the industry faces substantial barriers to delivering these solutions due to legacy platforms. There was general consensus on the need for funds and wealth administrators to move to modern, agile administration systems capable of supporting the new forms of highly targeted and personalised digital service delivery.

AMP’s Scott Barnett, Head of Technology, SMSF and CRM confirmed: “Building on the collaboration piece, and also listening actively and effectively to our customers is a key theme for many of us. We also talk more broadly in terms of enterprise agility and how we make the business more agile on an end-to-end basis to enable us to respond to the requirements for change.”

Markit (Nasdaq: MRKT), a leading global diversified provider of financial information services, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Information Mosaic, a leading software provider for corporate actions and post trade securities processing.

The Information Mosaic business is being integrated into Markit’s Solutions division and will be led by Paul Taylor, managing director, reporting to Michele Trogni, managing director and cohead of Solutions. 

The company has approximately 200 employees based primarily in Dublin and New Delhi, with additional offices in London, New York, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.  Information Mosaic’s customers include global banks, asset managers, wealth managers, sovereign wealth funds, investor services firms, custodians and exchanges.

The transaction is not expected to have a material impact on Markit’s financial results in 2015.  Financial terms were not disclosed.