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Last December ARQA Technologies’ RISQ solutions family was extended to include a new product designed for OS Linux in its Red Hat version.

Development of the module involved a number of low level optimizations including those raising the efficiency of I/O operations. Specialized network equipment (Solarflare card) and OpenOnload technology used in the solution proved highly time-saving while interacting with the hardware. Those allowed cutting more latency at reception and transmission stages - when FIX messages enter and leave the pre-trade RISQ filter. The new approach succeeded in cutting the additional latency introduced by employment of pre-trade module several-fold as compared to all other RISQ solutions.

This January developers of ARQA Technologies revised and extended the functionality of FIXPreTrade for Linux. The starting data of clients’ positions is now uploaded in the module. From that moment on the module is keeping positions on its own.  The resulting autonomy opens up new possibilities for the module’s use. Thus, having current position information inside the module allows banning short selling and permitting position closing even when some restrictions are violated. It is worth pointing out that the module’s enhanced autonomy did not entail any incremental latency resulting from pre-trade checks.

The head of QUIK development Danil Baburin commented on the release of the latest issue of FIXPreTrade for Linux by saying: ‘Having tried on a non-standard approach to the data content of the RISQ filter module inside FIXPreTrade for Linux we managed to bring the solution to a highest competitive level in terms of latency and accuracy of checks’.

With a strategic vision to transition smoothly to the country's new 'RBS-driven' regulatory regime, the Bank has chosen Fintellix's Risk Based Supervision solution. This pro-active initiative by the bank will help it migrate efficiently towards complying with the Indian Central Bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)'s risk-based supervision guidelines by leveraging the effort spent on RBI’s Automated Data Flow initiative, while at the same time benefiting from features like customizable workflows, seamlessly integrated action plans and superior collaboration capabilities.

The RBS submission team at the bank will now have complete control at a data-point level, while simplifying management of the submission by supporting team-level administration, collaboration between various teams, easily configurable workflows, dashboards for continuous monitoring and a slew of powerful features.

India is a complex regulatory environment and has a strong and pro-active Regulatory ecosystem that is considered a benchmark by central banks of several progressive economies. Significant regulatory mandates in the Indian banking regulation world invariably gets mandated in other geographies as well.

Also, Regulatory Compliance is more about complex data management and less about the actual reporting. Data management and its central role in delivering trusted data that regulators can rely on, therefore becomes paramount. Fintellix makes substantial investments in tracking global compliance trends to extract common themes that get incorporated in Fintellix's next generation Data management platform in advance, e.g. Fintellix’s foresight for RBI's ADF and BCBS239 well before the regulators published the papers.

With its next generation platform, Fintellix has solved compliance challenges for some of the fastest growing banks in the fastest changing compliance ecosystems. Moreover, clean data is the bedrock of compliance and each compliance initiative needs to leverage a common platform of clean, unified data. Fintellix’s SEMI (Single Extract Multiple Implementation) is a critical component for preventing loss of time, effort and money of building in silos.

Incidentally, Fintellix is the only product for RBS and having the maximum number of installations; currently 14 banks - for ADF, NPA and RBS. Critical success factors such as Faster Implementation, Agile Change Management and operations and Data Re-use for newer CRA (Compliance, Risk and Analytics) requirements have made Fintellix the preferred choice of banks.

Speaking on the occasion, Anup Pai, COO, Fintellix remarked, "Change is constant in the Compliance ecosystem and the key requirement for any regulatory compliance solution needs to be agility to handle change. Our customer has always been amongst the first movers for implementing regulatory best practices in India and we are delighted that they have chosen Fintellix's Risk-based Supervision solution to enhance their compliance efficiencies."

Meanwhile Fintellix is also expanding its geographic footprint to include the GCC which has a progressive and discerning banking sector with specific compliance challenges - both global and local. Fintellix is operationalising a partner-led market strategy in the GCC, where leading technology partners in the region, such as Finesse, will drive adoption of Fintellix's next generation Compliance solutions amongst banks in the GCC.

When the results were compared to the 2013 survey, the number of payment methods consumers had used in the previous month had increased. This illustrates that whilst the majority of consumers feel that certain payment methods are not as secure as others, when given the option they will still choose to use them if they offer convenience, though not nearly to the same frequency as the more trusted options.

“Our survey results show that regardless of industry speculation cash is still the most trusted and used payment method,” said Maria Nottingham, CEO at Compass Plus GB. “What is really clear from these results is the growth of the multi-channel consumer. People want the choice to carry out different transactions using different channels and payment methods, making the proliferation of any one channel in the future appear unlikely. It will, however, be interesting to see the correlation between trust and convenience for the mobile channel as consumers become more educated about the security measures in place and it crosses over into the mainstream.”

Compass Plus, an international provider of innovative retail banking and electronic payments software for financial institutions and processors, has announced that its open development payment platform, TranzAxis, has now been fully certified to support Futurex’s Excrypt SSP9000 hardware security modules (HSMs). This new partnership with Futurex, a provider of secure, robust, and cost-effective data encryption security solutions, has extended the list of HSMs now supported by the TranzAxis payment platform.

The project, which took less than two months to complete, was implemented in conjunction with Worldwide Financial Systems Solutions (WFSS), Compass Plus’ distributor in the Latin American and Caribbean region, during the migration of Global Processing Centre in Antigua (GPC) to TranzAxis. The certification has enabled customers, including GPC, to utilise Futurex HSMs for EMV data preparation and the card issuance process, as well as the secure authorisation and communication of sensitive data for Visa, MasterCard and UnionPay EMV cards.

Futurex Excrypt SSP 9900 is designed to offer complete and robust transaction security at industry-leading speeds with features that not only meet, but exceed the security requirements from industry standards, including ANSI, ISO, FIPS, and PCI.

“Futurex is committed to partnering with leading providers of electronic payment software such as Compass Plus and integration experts like Worldwide Financial Systems Solutions,” said Ryan Smith, Chief Solutions Architect at Futurex. “We are pleased that the Excrypt SSP9000 HSM, part of our Hardened Enterprise Security Platform and VirtuCrypt cloud services, has been certified with the Compass Plus TranzAxis platform.”