Lombard Risk Management plc (LSE: LRM) ("Lombard Risk"), a leading provider of integrated regulatory reporting and collateral management for the financial services industry, is pleased to announce that the London branch of Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank has successfully gone live with Lombard Risk REPORTER for Bank of England / Financial Conduct.
Authority regulatory reporting.

Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, Limited forms the core of Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group as one of the largest institutional investors and the leading trust bank in Japan.

As a London branch of an overseas bank, SuMi TRUST in London is regulated by the PRA and FCA and required to submit both statistical and prudential reporting to the Bank of England. Significant changes are expected from both authorities within the next 12 months namely, European Banking Authority (EBA) Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) in XBRL format, and further complexity is expected to the Bank of England reporting.

SuMi TRUST decided to extend its use of REPORTER to London when the rFrame platform it had been using became no longer supported by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services. SuMi TRUST already uses Lombard Risk REPORTER in Singapore and New York to meet local regulatory demands to the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Federal Reserve respectively. While SuMi TRUST went through an extensive review of available UK regulatory reporting systems for UK branches, REPORTER was seen as the vendor of choice to provide a longer-term strategic solution to meet multi-country regulatory reporting requirements and ongoing regulatory support.

Cliff Dowton, Head of IT, from SuMi TRUST in London says: "We evaluated a number of regulatory reporting systems to meet our UK regulatory reporting requirements. We selected Lombard Risk REPORTER because of their strong track record in the UK and our own success implementing the solution in other overseas locations."

REPORTER is an end-to-end regulatory reporting solution for the global financial services sector which is used by over 300 firms globally, 160+ for Bank of England reporting and more for EBA Common Reporting here in the UK. REPORTER for Bank of England reporting enables firms to:

· Automate an end-to-end regulatory reporting process from data acquisition,
standardisation through to calculation, reporting and submission via OSCA and GABRIEL

· Select from multiple deployment options that fit around existing architectures and processes that support a rapid deployment and superior solution total cost of ownership relative to other systems.

· Leverage existing data sources for complete coverage of reporting requirements.

· Achieve enhanced ad-hoc reporting

Robert Markham, EMEA Head of Sales Regulatory say: "We are delighted to have expanded our relationship with SuMi TRUST and that they are now live on Lombard Risk REPORTER in the UK within the agreed timespan and budget. We have seen a considerable increase to the client base in recent months, partly due to a significant number of former rFrame clients who found themselves in a similar situation to SuMi TRUST and took the opportunity to find a strategic solution."

The line of ‘front-to-back solutions’ from ARQA Technologies acquired another software product – the middle office of asset management companies capQORT.

The capQORT software consolidates the management company’s position as well as that of its clients based on results of trading in financial instruments and keeps it online in the form of portfolios and groups of portfolios.

capQORT helps generate and route trade orders in various financial instruments as well as for multiple execution brokers; account for on-the-exchange and OTC trades on Russian and international trading venues; perform pre- and post-trade risk management of trading operations. capQORT commands flexible functionality of limit controls, their infringement monitoring, calculation of management enumeration and compilation of various reports.

The user terminals of capQORT are designed for asset managers, risk-managers, compliance-officersand middle office employees.

The solution for asset managers has been developed on the basis of the program platform QORTand has been integrated with another product of ARQA Technologies — its front-office system QUIK. capQORT is distinguished by highly efficient data processing capacity (500 thousand transactions a day), overall stability and resilience.

The software product is available through one of the two models of distribution; its purchase and operation on premise by the asset management company or its use as managed service in the data center of ARQA Technologies in Moscow. In the latter case the server component of capQORT will be serviced by representatives of ARQA Technologies.

You may see the presentation of the software at: ‘capQORT: the middle office of the asset management company’ (in Russian).

Infront, the leading provider of real-time market data, news and analytics, is continuing its drive to add must-have functionality to its market data terminal with the introduction of a new portfolio view and enhanced mobile alerts. The new capabilities are aimed at helping institutional buy-side and other investors to gain better, real-time control over their investment portfolios.

Infront’s new portfolio view allows investors to keep track of their investments across asset classes in real-time. As well as monitoring current trading positions or a custom list of instruments, the new function can draw upon data from Excel spreadsheets and portfolio management systems, offering a clear view of overall market positions and exposures in real time.

Users are able to drill down into data on their investments using a variety of parameters, including industry sector, asset class and currency base. A monitoring function allows users to assess how specific investments are impacting movements in sectors or indices. Users are also able to click through to news, analytics and other factors that may be contributing to price movements.

The new version of Infront also enhances the system’s alert function, allowing users to set limits on prices, indices and other indicators and instantly receive alerts on their mobiles, tablets or home PCs. The new capability allows investors and analysts to monitor their portfolios – and keep on top of marketplace developments – wherever they are.

“These new capabilities continue Infront’s efforts to give clients more control over their investments,” says Infront COO Urs Rutschmann. “The new portfolio view gives a comprehensive statement on current trading and investment positions, while the mobile alerts capability informs users of market developments at all times wherever they are.”

Infront now also features an improved consolidated view of European equity markets, allowing users to identify activity across all European trading venues – including dark pools – exchanges and multilateral trading facilities (MTFs).

Unlike high-cost premium desktops, Infront’s flexibility of technology and commercial terms allow customers to use only what they actually need – saving significant costs.
About Infront Buy and sell-side institutions across Europe rely on Infront for electronic trading solutions and real-time market data, news, and analytics covering over 50 exchanges worldwide. Infront’s terminal, mobile apps and versatile electronic trading solutions connect professional users in over 27 countries to their local and international markets – helping financial institutions to reduce costs and increase trading volumes.  

SunGard has announced that its new industry utility for post-trade futures and cleared over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives operations has gone live with Barclays as the utility’s anchor customer. Barclays, an industry leader in the global cleared derivatives industry, has completed the migration of specific futures and OTC derivatives clearing operations and technology processes to the utility, as well as the transfer of a number of Barclays employees to SunGard.

Tim Stack, head of agency derivatives services at Barclays, said:  “We are extremely pleased with the successful and efficient transition of operations, technology processes and employees over to the SunGard post-trade derivatives utility. Throughout this project, SunGard has demonstrated its domain and technical expertise, its proficiency to effectively launch a utility, and its ability to affect positive change for Barclays and the industry as a whole.”

In addition, SunGard has appointed Andrew Whyte, formerly of Goldman Sachs, as president of the utility. Mr. Whyte has 19 years of technology and operations experience in the financial services industry, and held various senior leadership positions in derivatives, clearing, and credit operations globally with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. In these roles, Mr. Whyte focused on driving process improvement, standardization and compliance with regulatory reforms. He will join SunGard in mid-August, will be based in London and will report to Brian Traquair, executive vice president of SunGard Financial Systems. Until that time, Alun Green, a 20-year industry veteran and expert in post-trade derivatives processing, as well as current head of SunGard’s post-trade strategy, will have responsibility for all utility functions and day-to-day operations. On an ongoing basis, Mr. Green will also be based in London and will serve as deputy head of the utility and oversee its strategy, services and client relationships.

Mr. Traquair said: “We’ve reached significant milestones with the launch of our post-trade utility and Barclays as our first customer to go live, as well as the appointment of a strong leadership team to support SunGard’s global platform’s services capabilities and customer migrations. The utility is now a valuable alternative for FCMs. It will enable them to focus more effort and capital on the growth of their business, increasing competitive advantage and profitability.”

Compass Plus, an international provider of retail banking and electronic payments software to processors and financial institutions, has revealed the results of their recent research shows industry professionals believe mobile payments, NFC and contactless technology will reach mass adoption within five years despite previous results indicating they should already be mainstream.

Compass Plus has been undertaking research into the industry’s expectations of the payments market since 2011, and this year’s results, which took in the views of more than 190 payments and banking experts from across the globe, found that nearly a third of the respondents think that mobile payments will go mainstream in their region in the next five years (31.3%). When compared to previous survey results, these findings stood out as previous expectations have consistently stated that mobile payments should be mainstream within 1-3 years. By looking at the results from the 2011 and 2012 research, whose results stated mainstream penetration would occur within 2-3 years and 1-2 years consecutively, we should already have reached a state of mass adoption. However, in the most recent set of results industry expectations have been pushed back further to 2020. 

This trend has also been reflected in respondents’ answers to when NFC and contactless will become mainstream. Back in 2011, the majority vote was that mass adoption would have been reached within two years (29%), however this year’s result show that this was overambitious as respondents now believe mass adoption will occur within five years (41.5%) – seven years behind the original estimate.

“It is easy to get excited when new payments technology is introduced. However, experience has shown that no one payment channel becomes mainstream immediately. In the industry we tend to align our expectations with the potential of the technology rather than the consumer expectations,” said Maria Nottingham, Executive Vice President at Compass Plus. “To truly reach a state of mass adoption, consumers need to be on board. It is clear that current approaches to mobile payments are lacking in the versatility that the other methods offer, and this is something that needs to be addressed.”

 Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) has completed its acquisition of the Fiduciary Services and Competitive Intelligence unit from Thomson Reuters’ (NYSE: TRI) Lipper division. The acquisition expands Broadridge’s leading enterprise data and analytics solutions for mutual fund manufacturers, ETF issuers, and fund administrators, adding new global data and research capabilities. Broadridge announced its agreement to acquire the business on May 21, 2015. Terms were not disclosed.

As previously announced, Broadridge and Thomson Reuters Lipper also entered into a long term content and brand licensing services agreement under which Thomson Reuters Lipper will provide Broadridge with data on investment product classifications, pricing, performance, benchmarking, product asset positions, and product flows, ensuring continuity of underlying content and methodology.

“Adding these solutions to our well established mutual fund and retirement business provides our clients and the industry with a comprehensive suite of compliance oversight, fee benchmarking and competitive intelligence solutions,” said Gerard F. Scavelli, president of Broadridge’s Mutual Funds and Retirement Solutions Group. “Broadridge remains committed to delivering quality service to help clients mitigate risks, meet their fiduciary responsibilities and enhance sales productivity. We welcome Thomson Reuters’ clients and associates to the Broadridge organization.”

All Thomson Reuters Fiduciary Services and Competitive Intelligence unit associates in Denver, Colorado; London, England; and Gdynia, Poland will join the Broadridge organization. The acquired capabilities will be integrated within Broadridge’s Mutual Fund and Retirement Solutions Group, expanding its existing Access Data suite of market intelligence solutions.

Surecomp^®, the leading global provider of trade finance solutions for banks and corporations, announced today that COR-TF^®, its multi-bank corporate trade finance solution, has been awarded the “SWIFT Certified Application – Trade and Supply Chain Finance for Corporates” label for the fourth consecutive year.

The SWIFT Certified Application program certifies selected third-party applications to ensure that they meet well-defined requirements related to SWIFT standards, messaging and connectivity. Reevaluated each year to ensure alignment with evolving customer needs, certification requirements validate the ability of a product or application to provide automation in a SWIFT environment. SWIFT is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a member-owned cooperative through which the financial world conducts its business operations with speed, certainty and confidence.

“We are pleased that SWIFT has certified – for the fourth year running – our COR-TF solution, which is ideal for large corporations working with numerous international banks,” said Joel Koschitzky, Surecomp Chairman. “Since the beginning of the year, COR-TF has been licensed by a number of savvy corporations interested in bringing their global trade operations to the next level. These contract wins, coupled with renewed SWIFT accreditation, confirm that we are on the right path, and that CORT-TF provides real value to corporations engaged in trade finance.”

Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, has today announced a number of key enhancements to its bank-to-customer e-commerce platform, Electronic Trading, to enrich liquidity, reduce latency and improve customer experience.

The new enhancements see liquidity from Thomson Reuters multi-bank platform FXall integrated into Electronic Trading for the first time.  By including all Thomson Reuters relationship and anonymous liquidity for both pricing and risk management, Electronic Trading now helps banks offer more competitive prices to their customers while optimizing the risk management of their transactions. While full automation is possible, banks retain complete control over both pricing and hedging, enabling them to smoothly integrate their e-commerce activities with their other trading desks.

Thomson Reuters has also made key improvements to the performance of Electronic Trading’s core pricing engine that reduce latency on the platform. Extra auto execution and smart order routing methods have been added to the platform, improving both pricing accuracy and enabling trade execution with minimal market impact.

In addition, Thomson Reuters has significantly redesigned the user interface to enhance customer experience and support increased brand flexibility.  Sophisticated business intelligence tools have been added to help banks intuitively analyse and understand customer behavior, trends and profitability using innovative visualizations of transaction data.

“Against a backdrop of market scrutiny, the need for increasing transparency and trade reporting will only see an increased adoption of electronic FX trading around the world,” said Neill Penney, head of workflow management at Thomson Reuters. “Our bank customers need flexible trading platforms to continue to forge direct connections with their customers electronically. They need tools that provide control over electronic pricing, distribution and hedging to meet the growing demands of their client base and improve internal efficiency through automation. This is why we are committed to continuous innovation on our Electronic Trading platform.” 

Part of Thomson Reuters premium desktop trading service, Electronic Trading offers a suite of e-commerce products that enable banks to shape, configure and automate FX prices to customers while streamlining risk management. Over 100 banks across 56 countries already use Thomson Reuters Electronic Trading to connect directly with their clients globally.