Overwhelmingly rapid change has become the new normal in regulatory compliance worldwide, including India. Form, content, format and calculation are being constantly changed by regulators to drive a stable financial ecosystem. Post the 2008 global crisis, regulators across the world have begun switching to Risk-based Supervision (RBS) to ensure banks do not take undue risks to maximise profits and boost performance. Meanwhile the RBI is phasing out its CAMELS-based inspection and is ushering in a new Risk-based Supervision environment to manage the banking system more closely. While the RBI has already communicated its RBS mandate to banks, the big question is - are banks really ready for the RBS regime?

Scheduled to be held at the Four Seasons Hotel on 11 June, Fintellix’s ‘by invitation only’ briefing will have banking leaders sharing insights on how banks can leverage innovation to lay the foundation for future-proofing compliance with RBI. The briefing will demonstrate how existing investments in Automated Data Flow (ADF) can be easily leveraged to address upcoming local and global regulations such as RBS, LCR, FATCA, etc. Sessions will cover topics such as - staying ahead of the compliance curve in a demanding regulatory environment; RBI’s new RBS regime: trials and tribulations of constant compliance; building a future-ready compliance infrastructure and ideas around building a ‘compliance-proof’ bank.

40% of Top 20 Private and Foreign Banks are now using Fintellix for RBI Regulatory Compliance initiatives. With RBI’s ADF mission now having concluded, most banks who have implemented ADF correctly have inherited a CDR (Centralized Data Repository) that should serve multiple MIS and Compliance initiatives. With its investments in CDR and a Metadata-based Platform, Fintellix has been able to deliver the compelling benefits of reuse for meeting newer Compliance requirements, such as NPA / EWS, Risk-based Supervision (RBS) and Liquidity Credit Ratio (LCR) without further investments, by leveraging the same CDR.

Incidentally Fintellix is the only banking regulations specialist providing solutions for all of RBI’s requirements such as NPA, RBS and LCR, as per RBI’s ADF vision, on a single platform and CDR. Fintellix provides banks with the assurance of reliable and comprehensive Compliance with current and future regulator demands. Also, owing to the pioneering vision of RBI’s Automated Data Flow, banks by virtue of implementing ADF are now automatically compliant with the new BCBS 239 regulation.

The Fintellix Compliance Suite is powered by Fintellix’s next generation Data platform that is a singular, integrated and scalable Banking Data Management infrastructure which plugs into the Bank's internal and external data sources via pre-built ‘adapters’ and provisions raw Banking data for a variety of downstream uses such as Regulatory Reporting, Risk Management and Business Analytics. Fintellix also provides a Cloud option for banks as a SaaS-based utility model for advanced Banking Compliance, Risk and Analytics. Fintellix on Cloud is a secure and comprehensive option for scalability, responsiveness and cost-efficiencies. Fintellix's Compliance solutions are available for on-premises implementations as well as provisioning from a Regional Cloud Infrastructure.

Move enables banks to grasp the US$2 trillion Islamic banking market opportunity through new lower cost cloud access to Temenos’ long-established T24 Islamic banking solution.

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the market leading provider of mission-critical solutions to the financial services industry, today announces that its specialist T24 Islamic core-banking solution is now available as a cloud-based service, ‘T24 Cloud Islamic’, delivering access to enterprise-level IT at an affordable price, while no compromise is made with regard to compliance with Islamic law.

Operating expenses are generally 50% higher for Islamic Banks as their products are Shari’ah compliant, making the Islamic market expensive and difficult to crack.  With T24 Cloud Islamic this is set to change, as banks can take advantage of the lower operating costs and subscription-based pricing offered by cloud, while accessing quality, Shari’ah compliant products.

Fadi Yazbeck, Product Manager for Islamic Banking at Temenos, said: “Key industry bodies believe that the growth of Islamic trade finance will reach up to US$800 billion by the end of this year. There is a huge opportunity in leveraging this growth.   T24 Cloud Islamic enables progressive African banks to grasp this opportunity for growth easily and cost effectively, while addressing their compliance needs.

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR) has received the Inside Reference Data award for "Best Managed Service for Reference Data" for the third consecutive year. The awards, which are judged by end-users in financial firms, recognize industry excellence within market data, reference data and enterprise data management. 

"This award highlights Broadridge's commitment to reducing the operational burden on our clients and we are proud to receive this recognition from Inside Reference Data for the third year in a row," said Bennett Egeth, president, Investment Management Solutions, Broadridge. "Our global reference data solutions help buy-side and sell-side firms of all sizes and various levels of complexity realize significant cost savings and reduce operational risk by consolidating and delivering the highest quality reference data."  

Broadridge's reference data capabilities provide solutions to manage securities terms and conditions, price acquisition and valuation, and corporate actions, which are offered on a licensed, hosted and managed service basis. They are designed to help clients meet ongoing demands for data consistency, transparency and accuracy, while avoiding the high costs and potential risks associated with gathering, cleansing and distributing the data on their own.

The solutions suite includes a global repository of reference data that enables firms to centralize and manage security terms and conditions across an entire enterprise; a repository of global pricing and market data developed to support complex pricing and valuation requirements for investment managers and global financial institutions; and a managed corporate action service. Broadridge services more than 250 clients globally across its reference data solution set.

The Best Managed Service for Reference Data award was presented at the 13^th annual Inside Market Data and Inside Reference Data Awards ceremony on May 20, 2015 in New York City.

SunGard, one of the world’s leading financial software companies, today announced the opening of its East African office in Nairobi, Kenya. By investing in and establishing a physical presence in Kenya, widely regarded as the financial services hub for East Africa, SunGard will reinforce its commitment to the region and is well positioned to execute on its strategy of achieving accelerated growth in these markets.

SunGard’s Nairobi office will provide its existing customers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda with professional services, training and project support, and function as a sales and account management base to expand and service new customers in the broader East African region. With existing offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Tunis, Nairobi will mark SunGard’s fourth regional operating office in Africa. SunGard currently supports over 140 customers in Africa, which include banks, securities firms, hedge funds, pension funds, asset managers, energy and commodity trading firms, insurance companies, corporations and government entities in 15 African countries.

Fred Manthe, managing director East Africa for SunGard, said: “With East Africa’s sizeable and strong developing financial services market, there is an increasing need for sound market regulation and compliance. As we focus on the region’s positive economic growth and expanding client network, we are very excited about our strategic investment in East Africa and look forward to offering our customers a more efficient, competitive and industry aligned solutions and service delivery.”

Alberto Fasana, managing director Africa for SunGard, said: “Countries in East and Central Africa have undergone a considerable and positive transformation in recent years. The sub-Saharan mobile money revolution alone has enabled Kenya to claim a leading position in the financial services arena, with banks offering a diverse range of new products such as loans, savings accounts, mortgages and insurance. We are supporting the local financial industry with the underlying technology and services which enable clients to bring new products to market quickly, automate their business processes, implement tighter risk management practices, and meet required regulatory demands.”

SunGard’s East African office will be located at Eaton Place, 2nd floor, United Nations Crescent, Gigiri, Nairobi, Kenya.

Thomson Reuters has today announced that it is extending the services it provides within CME Group’s co-location facility located in Aurora, Illinois to include managed real-time data feeds and its low-latency news service, providing customers with high-performance, high-quality content while lowering the cost of ownership.

The customers located in CME’s Aurora facility need access to cross-asset data and news to identify new opportunities and make the most informed trading decisions.  Maintaining access to a broad universe of high-updating data, however, can be costly and require significant investment in infrastructure.  Thomson Reuters can provide these services through Elektron Managed Services within the Aurora facility as part of the flexible range of market data delivery options it offers customers.

Through the service announced today, customers who have their trading applications in CME Group’s Aurora facility will be able to access Thomson Reuters Elektron Real Time consolidated market data feed and the low-latency News Feed Direct service via a simple cross-connect.  This lowers the requirements for costly infrastructure and provides high-quality, cross-asset news and market data to help power customer applications and inform their trading strategies.

“Elektron Managed Services gives customers the ability to scale their businesses rapidly and access low-latency data and services while lowering the typical costs of deploying and managing equivalent solutions in-house,” said Paras Sidapara, global head of managed services, Financial & Risk, at Thomson Reuters.  “By offering low-latency, real-time market data and machine readable news feeds direct to customers inside CME Group’s Aurora facility, we are helping customers access the breadth of content they need to make informed trading decisions in a cost-effective and highly flexible way.”

In addition to the Aurora facility, Thomson Reuters offers Elektron Managed Services through a network of its own data centers located in established and developing financial markets, including Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Toronto.

In response to the need for health insurance plans in the US to drive down the overall cost of care while improving quality and transparency, SunGard has launched new capabilities for health plans, including outsourcing options for end-to-end claims processing support and business intelligence (BI) dashboards for improved workflow.

With multiple competing priorities, insurance executives are seeking new ways to improve quality and transparency, reduce operating expenses, and free up valuable human and capital resources to focus on more strategic business initiatives. Delivering a complete end-to-end ­Business-Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS) solution for claims processing, SunGard provides mail house, scanning, data entry and secure document destruction. In addition, SunGard has launched business intelligence dashboards for its Macess workflow solution, which integrates, automates and streamlines complex processes. These dashboards help executives make more informed business decisions and act quickly on the data they have by analyzing trends in claims, enrollment and other areas.

“Insurers will win customers and reach the next level of claims-handling proficiency by making better use of their only natural resource—data. Insurers have the potential to change the key processes that determine most policyholders' views of their carriers and achieve the next level of performance for claims professionals, by turning routinely overlooked data into actionable information.” – Jamie Bisker, senior analyst, Aite Group

“Cloud computing has such potential and great interest by insurers. The move to a more affordable, variable cost model is a big win. The vendors are listening and we are seeing them pick up the pace.” – Tom Scales, research director, Celent’s Life, Health and Annuity Insurance practice

“We’ve offered BPO for claims processing for many years, but we’ve recently launched a full process service that not only helps to reduce costs overall, but also improves related downstream processes. Our latest innovations in solutions and services help health plans improve efficiency, ease regulatory reporting and drive down costs in many areas. It is part of our broader initiative to provide insurers with tools to help transform massive amounts of raw data into actionable insights. We are working closely with insurers to apply innovations which improve business process management by extending back-office productivity to mobile and cloud capabilities which meet the needs of insurers globally across life, health and property/casualty.” – Roy Massie, vice president, product management, SunGard’s insurance business

SunGard also recently launched a Health Information Exchange (HIE) Connectivity solution to help insurers improve care management, providing near real-time alerts of hospital discharges and transfers among high risk patients. In 2014, SunGard released its CMS Audit Support service to help insurers avoid and/or respond to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) inquiries.

Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of information for businesses and professionals, now offers increased depth of coverage in Canada’s fixed income markets from the electronic bond trading marketplace CBID, operated by Perimeter Markets Inc.

Real time price and yield data from CBID is now available on Thomson Reuters Eikon, the company’s flagship financial markets desktop, providing investors around the world with access to detailed information sourced from Canada’s only live bond marketplace. Customers can also access the market data via Elektron Real Time, a low-latency, consolidated real-time feed that provides normalized, full-tick, depth-of-market data from exchanges around the world in a format that can be easily integrated into proprietary and third party applications.

Investors will enjoy access to more than 3,500 lines of live inventory and depth-of-market data on Government of Canada and federal agency bonds, provincial bonds, municipal bonds, corporate bonds, strip bonds and money markets. Data is based on live executable offerings (not indications of interest) from several of Canada’s leading fixed income broker dealers and includes historical reference data going back to 2002.

“This agreement with Perimeter demonstrates our ongoing commitment to providing sought after services to the Canadian marketplace. Adding CBID enables us to provide authoritative data on Canada’s fixed income markets while opening significant new investment opportunities for both Eikon users and customers using Elektron Real Time from Thomson Reuters at the enterprise level in this important global market,” said Jamie Grant, Thomson Reuters global head of rates for fixed income.

“The unique nature and rapid growth of CBID make it an ideal source of this type of information for individual investors,” said Geoff Eby, president of Perimeter Markets Inc. “Unlike some other bond information sources, whose pricing may be based on indicative levels, the CBID data represents the wholesale prices and yields in Canada’s live fixed income marketplace.”

Perimeter Markets Inc. through its CBID product suite operates Canada’s leading multi-participant electronic bond trading marketplaces, delivering transparency and trading efficiency to various components of the Canadian fixed income industry. CBID brings together the investment dealers, investment counselors, pension fund managers and discount brokerage firms that serve individual Canadian investors. CBID Institutional facilitates electronic and anonymous trading between the country's largest buy and sell side firms and CBID Futures provides institutional traders with direct access to the Montreal Exchange to trade interest rate futures.

Fintellix will be sponsoring this year’s annual American Bankers Association CFO Exchange. Scheduled to be held from June 8 – 10 at the Hilton Downtown in Nashville, Tennessee the conference will educate community bank CFOs about accounting rules, economic trends, financial metrics, portfolio management, and more. In association with its knowledge partner, Ardmore Banking Associates, Fintellix will be demonstrating its Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses (ALLL) Management Module from its Credit Portfolio Management suite, bringing a proven ALLL methodology delivered on a next generation automation platform to community banks and credit unions.

“The constant change in the community bank CFO's environment— Capital, Profitability, Accounting and Credit Risk Management —is creating some very real challenges”, said Anup Pai, COO, Fintellix. “Which is why the ABA CFO Exchange provides an excellent platform as it enables community bank CFOs to interact with their peers, share ideas, and understand new and upcoming regulations and practices. We are delighted to demonstrate our Credit Portfolio Management expertise, with a focus on how the Fintellix ALLL Manager can help community bank CFOs navigate the new CECL landscape.”

Fintellix Credit Portfolio Manager is the only solution available in the market to cover all aspects of “Loan Data Life Cycle” entailing data acquisition, transformation, unification, standardization, calculation and representation. It is a one stop solution to help community banks and credit unions with ALLL Reserve Calculation and Reporting, Portfolio and Performance Analytics and Reporting, Credit Portfolio Review and Monitoring and Portfolio Stress Testing.

The Fintellix ALLL Manager enables community banks to become audit and examination ready, while providing management with rich credit portfolio analytics. Featuring a  straight-through process built around ALLL calculation and process-related requirements prescribed by regulators, and delivered on a flexible, future-proof, next generation Data Management platform, Fintellix ALLL Manager substantially reduces manual efforts and inaccuracies in calculations. In addition to ALLL calculations and reporting, Fintellix ALLL Manager also helps banks track and manage asset quality definitions with in-built features for early warning asset deterioration signals.

To extract maximum ROI on banks' existing data infrastructure investments, Fintellix also has an innovative Cloud alternative, which besides reducing overall TCO, dramatically shrinks implementation timelines. Fintellix Cloud encompasses Fintellix’s Compliance, Risk and Analytics solutions along with the Fintellix Data Management Platform features as suited to each solution. Fintellix Cloud also eliminates concerns around managing hardware and software as the solution leverages capabilities of a shared infrastructure where banks pay as per usage with a seamless exit strategy, automatic upgrades and scalability.