DealHub (Option Computers Ltd) has announced the launch of DealHub RefleX, a modular eFX platform that combines the firm’s tried and tested trading connectivity with a new price and execution management engine and an HTML5 client trading portal to deliver a high performance, multi-channeleFX platform.

Peter Kriskinans, CEO of DealHub, comments “The launch of DealHubRefleX marks a major step in the evolution of our trading solutions.  Over the last five years, we’ve painstakingly built out our eFX technology, working hand in hand with customers to build best of breed components for every step of the trading workflow.  Our new pricing and execution tools, combined with a cutting edge HTML5 trading GUI, complete the stack – we now offer an unrivalled breadth of capabilities pre and post trade, with the commercial, technical and workflow flexibility to support banks of all sizes”

DealHub RefleX provides banks with a flexible toolkit of eFX modules that can be configured and customised to deliver seamless enhancement to an existing bankplatform, or as an end-to-end solution for the complete eCommerce workflow from liquidity sourcing, through price management, venue and portal distribution to execution, credit and risk management, and Straight Through Processing (STP).  The platform also features built in business intelligence tools for monitoring trading performance and system latency, as well as compliance investigation and surveillance. DealHub RefleXcan be deployed on-premise or delivered as a service from DealHub’s co-located hosting facilities in Equinix LD4 and NY4.

Chris Leaver, COO of DealHub, comments “Very few banks now opt for a 100% build strategy in eFX, and the first generation vendor platforms are looking dated, withlimited flexibility or differentiation.  DealHub RefleX offers banks a genuine alternative - the platform provides our customers with a flexible, fast to market route to a high performance, customised eFX platform - one component at a time, or across the full stack”

Based on DealHub’s established complex event processing technology, the platform offers next generation functionality, coupled with the flexible business logic that allows banks to customise the platform to their own unique business goals.  Highlights include:

·         A powerful new price engine that blends and filters liquidity from multiple sources, feeding into an intuitive trader dashboard for active rate management

·         A highly flexible margining module that adds specific customer mark-up according to multi-level criteria, pre-defined in easy to use configuration tables

·         The platform includes sophisticated logic for the calculation and decomposition of cross rates and associated margins

·         Trade requests are handled by a rules-based execution management module, which includes last look validation and a comprehensive manual intervention capability

·         Credit checks can either be coordinated with in-house systems, or handled by the low latency limit management module

·         DealHub’s FX Distribution Hub forms an integral part of the platform, providing tried and tested liquidity sourcing and price distribution connectivity to all key FX venues and a growing number of global and regional banks

The launch of DealHub RefleX also sees the introduction of a new client trading portal that works alongside DealHub’s proven venue and API distribution technology, to give clients access to the full range of distribution channels.  The new portal has been developed using the latest HTML5 technology for native browser delivery and can be fully branded and extended to give banks a private electronic distribution channel with a unique customer experience.  The portal captures Spot, Forward, Swap and NDF transactions via executable streamingor request for quote models.  Powerful decision support tools include a comprehensive charting library, as well as news feeds and the option to embed a fully auditable chat capability for in-deal support and automated capture of more complex trades.

The core elements of DealHub RefleX, including the new price engine, are in live use with a wide variety of bank customers, from tier one firms to regional specialists.

The new platform integrates seamlessly with DealHub’s complete range of trading, post trade and compliance solutions that combine the widest range of market connectivity, with modularpre and post trade capabilities at every stage of the trading workflow, allowing customers to rapidly build and deploy highly customised trading infrastructure that reinforces their unique competitive advantages.  DealHub’s trading solutions are used by a range of Financial Markets customers, including the majority of the world’s largest banks. 

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR), the leading global provider of technology-driven solutions to the financial services industry, reports that in the six years since the global financial crisis, its post-trade managed service client base in North America has more than doubled. This growth represents 15 new clients and is the fourth year of double-digit growth for Broadridge Business Process Outsourcing.

After years of cost cutting throughout the financial services industry, recent and ongoing demands for increased capital and collateral are putting renewed pressure on firms to optimize, transform and reevaluate their business models. Broadridge is uniquely positioned to help firms adapt to market structure changes by mutualizing costs and capabilities while sustaining premium service in operations and technology. As a result, more than 30 firms in total, including Bloomberg Tradebook and Société Générale, have contracted with Broadridge to manage all or part of their post-trade operations.

“We recognized many years ago that this would become a serious pressure point for financial services firms, and today we’re leveraging our state-of-the-art technology combined with our unique industry insights and expertise to optimize, transform and enhance the speed to market for our clients. This is an increasingly important offering as firms struggle to comply with enormous regulatory challenges while also freeing up investment dollars to accelerate revenue growth,” said Mike Alexander, President, Broadridge Business Process Outsourcing. “Given Broadridge’s scope, scale and growing global banking clientele, we have become the de facto industry standard in managed services for post-trade processing.”

The customized service offers a unique combination of experienced operations staff and process expertise with Broadridge’s award-winning technology. Scivantage, a Global FinTech 100 technology provider, recently selected Broadridge as its exclusive provider of reconciliation managed services to its 17 clients. Across the industry, Broadridge handles 4,000 reconciliations daily.

“Regulatory compliance, cost mutualization and operational risk management are the three major concerns for financial services firms globally. Broadridge’s global technology and operations solutions provide a comprehensive menu of middle- and back-office services that are multi-currency, multi-asset class and multi-geography,” said Arun Sharma, Chief Operating Officer, Global Technology and Operations Solutions, Broadridge. “Our managed service is best-in-class and trusted among the leading regulatory authorities globally due to the reputation we’ve built over the past five decades.”

“There is constant pressure for firms to comply with costly regulations while also continuing to make investments and grow revenue. Broadridge clients tap into the firm’s expertise, scale and flexibility to address escalating post-trade processing expenses, leverage industry best practices to minimize operational risk, and allow them to focus on evolving their business models,” said Andy Efstathiou, Research Director, NelsonHall.

For more than 50 years, Broadridge has been helping financial firms across the capital markets, investment management and wealth management businesses transform their business models by outsourcing operational functions to transfer operational risk and reduce cost.

Diasoft, a leading financial software provider, has joined the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) to assist drive banking innovation and participate in the development of banking technology standards.

BIAN is an independent, member-owned, not-for-profit organisation, which, in collaboration with industry participants, aims to define and set the software standards for banking interoperability services. The network focuses on creating a standard semantic banking services landscape. Since its creation in 2008, BIAN’s mission has been to establish a service-oriented architecture (SOA) standard in the banking industry.

Diasoft was one of the first companies to realise the potential of service-oriented architecture. In 2005 Diasoft worked with BIAN-member IBM — one of the leaders of the SOA-industry, to implement the principles of SOA, EDA (Electronic Design Automation) and component-based business-process driven architecture into its next-generation FLEXTERA solution. Focusing on SOA principles and Java EE technologies, Diasoft created a universal component-based FLEXTERA system to deliver future-proof financial solutions to its customers. These can integrate easily within their existing infrastructure and meet both today’s needs and the strategic requirements of their businesses.

Today, the FLEXTERA system contains more than 70 off-the-shelf components for front-to-back automation of the modern banking industry. Each of the components can be either implemented independently, while still tightly integrated with existing software, or alternatively, as a full solution - bringing all the benefits of modern architecture for financial institutions. More than 800 business processes are supported out-of-the box covering every aspect of retail, corporate and investment banking.

Diasoft believes that SOA is the best solution for the financial industry for facilitating the development of new applications, while also speeding up the time-to-market for new products.

BIAN membership will provide Diasoft with numerous advantages, including a greater insight into the exact needs and requirements of banks, the opportunity to jointly solve the technology issues banks are facing today, and the ability to gain increased knowledge from work in progress on service standards.

“BIAN’s service landscape serves as a reference model for financial institutions globally and we are excited to be taking an active role in shaping of the industry standards which will bring numerous benefits to financial institutions globally, such as an increased business agility, improved operations, and decreased IT spending”, - said Mikhail Kryuchkov, International Business Development Director at Diasoft.

Members of BIAN support the banking industry by combining knowledge of the requirements and trends of the Financial Services landscape with the ability to design and provide new IT-solutions. Therefore, through membership of BIAN, Diasoft will obtain a strong network, through which to exchange information and knowledge and support the sector's transition to newer, non-proprietary technologies.

Last year Diasoft has assessed FLEXTERA to fit BIAN’s approach to building banking architecture and componentisation of the solutions. By results of assessment FLEXTERA turned out to perfectly match to BIAN`s financial services landscape.

“At Diasoft, we are proud of being a pioneer in the adoption of SOA principles. We always aim to deliver the most innovative technologies and the market’s best solutions to our customers”, - said Mikhail Kryuchkov, International Business Development Director at Diasoft.  “ of architectural principles should simplify the integration between components from different vendors and help banks to build more effective IT architectures. We believe that with our BIAN membership, we will be able to deliver to our clients the most cutting-edge technologies and open solutions and help them to innovate. We look forward to our productive partnership and the benefits it will bring all of us.”

Hans Tesselaar, executive director, BIAN said: “BIAN is growing at an amazing rate, with new members from banks, software vendors and service providers continuing to come together to develop a new industry standard – a flexible architecture that can improve a bank’s ability to work flexibly across systems and help reduce integration costs. “It is great to have Diasoft join this growing network – a company that sees the real value of adopting and implementing SOA principles.”

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc (NYSE:BR) has announced that Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP), one of the largest providers of business processing and cloud-based solutions and a leading provider of retirement services, has implemented Broadridge’s Defined Contribution Data Management Service offering to provide unprecedented insights into the defined contribution marketplace.  Broadridge’s Access Data business team will aggregate and enrich ADP’s sales and asset data to empower ADP’s marketing and sales teams to better service current business partners, as well as identify new growth opportunities.

“Identifying advisors selling defined contribution assets represents a significant opportunity for retirement plan providers like ADP that partner with distributors to grow defined contribution assets under management. Our solutions will provide ADP with actionable intelligence about advisors that specialize in defined contribution business,” stated Frank Polefrone, Senior Vice President, Broadridge. “Our expanding and unique suite of offerings for the retirement space makes us well-positioned to help all of our clients, retirement recordkeepers and DCIO fund providers alike, capitalize on the growth in the defined contribution marketplace.”

Broadridge supports retirement and fund providers with a comprehensive service offering for regulatory and marketing communications and mutual fund trade processing, as well as data, analytics and reporting to enable business growth. Now, Broadridge’s Defined Contribution Data Management and Retirement Advisor Intelligence solutions will deliver the industry’s most comprehensive view of the defined contribution marketplace. Broadridge’s Access Data team also provides data services and reporting to the leading DCIO fund firms in the industry to help those firms track defined contribution sales made by advisors that partner with leading independent recordkeeping platforms like ADP, Schwab, The Standard, and others.

“We decided to partner with Broadridge for this important offering because of its suite of products and services for the retirement services industry, but also the specific expertise of its Access Data team to manage and enhance defined contribution data.  This offering is a critical aspect of our plans to service our distribution partners, provide information to our fund partners, and assist our sales and marketing teams to grow our business,” said Chris Augelli, Vice President, Product Marketing and Business Development, ADP Retirement Services.  “They bring a comprehensive view of the market and the expertise to effectively mine the industry’s big data sets, which empower us to target and win new business,” added Mr. Augelli.

Defined contribution assets are forecast to grow to $6.7 trillion over the next five years. The key to unlocking that growth lies in knowing where those opportunities exist. The fastest growth segment for defined contribution assets is generated by the small to medium-sized plan segment supported by independent recordkeeping platforms. 

Emerging Markets Payments (EMP), the leading electronic payments processing company in the Middle East and Africa (MEA), has announced the signing of an exclusive technology and center of excellence partnership with Afghanistan Payments Systems (APS), the local domestic payment card switch in Afghanistan.

The agreement will allow EMP to work with all Afghan banks in partnership with APS, providing fast, reliable and secure electronic payment card processing for ATMs, POS and remote card not present (CNP) transactions such as bill payments and recurring payments.

"Afghanistan is a country of immense potential,” said Paul Edwards, Executive Chairman of EMP. “With sound infrastructure and growing demand for payment solutions, the Afghan market represents a remarkable opportunity. As we develop close ties with our local partners, EMP will showcase its skills as an industry leader to help move the country towards a more financially diverse and customer-centric payments environment.”

According to media reports, http://betterthancash.org/news-releases/government-of-afghanistan-joins-better-than-cash-alliance/ by the end of 2012 more than 70 percent of Afghan government employees received their salaries electronically compared to just 1 percent in 2006. Although fewer than 5 percent of Afghans have bank accounts, approximately 65 percent have mobile phones and nearly 90 percent of the population lives in areas with mobile network coverage, so there is great potential for new payment methods.

“At APS, we view our partnership with EMP as a strategic step towards offering the Afghan market cutting-edge payment processing solutions,” said Zaheer Bawar, Managing Director of APS. “At APS, we are working relentlessly to ensure that we operate in accordance with the highest international standards for the industry. We believe our partnership with EMP will enable us to go to market faster and will also provide our client banks in Afghanistan with access to high-quality services and state-of-the-art solutions.”

EMP is expanding quickly across the wider MEA region, having opened its first branch in Nairobi, Kenya in June of this year to join the company’s offices in Cairo, Egypt; Amman, Jordan; Lagos, Nigeria; Dubai, UAE; Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. The smart card processing pioneer serves 130 banks across MEA and has grown in tandem with the electronic payments industry, which is still in the emergent stage across much of the region.

EMP offers an innovative and wide scope of products for banks, merchants and government including advisory services, mobile payment, bill presentment and payments among many others. The company most recently launched the cutting-edge bill presentment program with the Central Bank of Jordan known as eFawateerCom at a press conference hosted at Cards and Payments Middle East in Dubai, UAE.

TMF Custom House Fund Services, a leading provider of financial services to the alternative investment sector, has announced that it is now offering clients a depositary lite, or ‘Depo Lite,’ platform to support alternative investment managers marketing their funds in Europe to fulfill their AIFMD requirements. This Depo Lite service will conduct cash-flow monitoring and general oversight requirements to a manager and all relevant funds.

The new offering is an extension of TMF Custom House’s existing regulation and compliance offerings. Depo Lite is applicable to managers in two scenarios

-          When they are domiciled in an EEA country, do not require full authorization but market fund shares or units in any EEA country, or

-          When they are domiciled outside the EEA but market fund shares or units into specified EEA countries that have included a Depo Lite requirement in revised private placement regimes. To date four countries have done this, includingGermany and France, and others are likely to follow suit over time.

“We offer a comprehensive range of Depo Lite services to meet clients’ requirements,” said Mark Hedderman, CEO, TMF Custom House, “and our team is committed to making delivery of the Depo Lite solution as seamless as possible."

“TMF Custom House has always been focused on investors and the investor experience on behalf of fund managers, said Dermot Mockler, Group Head of Regulatory Affairs, Compliance & Anti Money Laundering. “This offering will allow our client managers to concentrate on their core investment activities, while ensuring that they are fully compliant with the AIFMD regulations.”

TMF Custom House is also preparing to launch another service related to the AIFMD Directive, where it will assist client managers with extensive reporting obligations, known as Annex IV Reporting. The company is engaging with service providers with a view to rolling out a substantive solution in the 4th quarter 2014.

Misys, the leading financial software provider, has launched Misys Connect, a suite of programmes to deliver value from every part of the business to its clients.

Providing a seamless integrated customer experience, Misys Connect enables clients to drive return on investment and competitive advantage. At its core are a set of programmes each making it easier for clients to derive value from their relationship with Misys, in addition to its software and services.

Misys Connect comprises six categories giving customers direct access and links to the cross-functional teams and expertise they need to maintain competitive edge. Each category contains three value-added programmes which help clients derive the most benefit from Misys.

1. Strategic Advantage: Providing clients with access to the people, resources and capabilities necessary to help achieve growth and achieve competitive advantage. Dr. Burkhard Schäpers, Head of Investment Banking IT Portigon Financial Services, comments, “Our involvement in user groups is helping us to drive a stronger collaboration between Misys and its clients, our industry peers. This will help us shape the Misys product roadmap and ultimately drive further strategic advantage.”

2. Technological Edge: Ensuring Misys’ software products match customers’ business needs and that Misys delivers new, genuinely innovative customer-centric products and services.

3. Accelerated Deployment: Delivering the services required to ensure rapid deployment, fast time-to-value, seamless integration and positive user adoption for all Misys solutions. 2

“The Misys Service Delivery Centre provided the best resource possible to help ensure our project success,” states Pitkänen Tarja, Vice President, Pohjola Bank, on one of the programmes within this category. “We worked together as one team and this helped us achieve an effective solution delivery.”

4. Proactive Support: Providing the fast, effective, interactive support essential to the ongoing success of each client’s business and to its future growth. Lav Kataria, Chief Operating Officer, Saudi Hollandi Bank, adds, “We’ve received excellent proactive support from the Customer Advocate at Misys, as well as the On-Demand Support capabilities. All of this has significantly contributed to our overall project success.”

5. Enhanced Dialogue: Offering unlimited possibilities to interact with industry peers and Misys colleagues, share experience and skills, and help maximise the benefits of Misys software.

6. Return on Reputation: Helping Misys clients to build, enhance and continuously develop their reputation as market-leading, customer-focused financial services organisations. “By partnering with Misys on the Return on Reputation programmes, we have been able to showcase our industry leadership and demonstrate ROI,” comments Hendrik Pothof, Manager, Lending Services Value Chain Design & Support, ING Commercial Banking.

“The customer experience is entwined tightly with the organisation and its employees. Appropriate alignment, understanding, empowerment and motivation are company prerequisites for customer engagement to be positive,” states Ed Thompson, VP Distinguished Analyst, Gartner in the October 3, 2013 report, Understanding How Customer Engagement Drives a Positive Customer Experience. He further recommends, “Deliver the experience. Today's IT skills and technologies are only part of what you need to deliver a satisfying customer experience. This must be an integrated enterprise effort encompassing an ensemble of diverse organisational elements.”

“Adding real value is the key factor in ensuring a continuous positive experience,” comments Nadeem Syed, CEO of Misys. “The resulting strong and long-term partnership Misys Connect generates ensures we continue to support our customers as they grow and adapt to 3

changing market demands. We look forward to more clients joining Misys Connect and gaining more value from a deeper relationship with us.”

Fidessa group plc (LSE: FDSA) has  announced that it has expanded the service it offers its UK broker clients with the addition of Alliance News, a new journalistic news service targeted at UK companies, investors and their advisors. Covering all UK listed companies, Alliance News delivers both breadth and depth of coverage including smaller and AIM-listed companies, as well as providing general, global economic content.

James Blackburn, Global Head of Equities Product Marketing at Fidessa, comments: "Fidessa prides itself on offering its clients quality, value and choice, particularly when it comes to content in support of their trading activities. We regularly review the service that we offer and take into account requests and feedback we receive from our users. Alliance News offers a cost-effective service providing concise news alerts followed by succinct journalist-written articles which address the broadening needs that many of our UK clients have raised with us."

Founded in 2013, Alliance News is formed of a seasoned team that brings over 50 years of financial news and technology experience.

"As established people from the industry, we’ve experienced first-hand what works and what doesn’t", adds Tom Waite, CEO of Alliance News. "There is a lot of business news around, but much of it is of little use at the point of trade. We aim to uncover news, check the facts and publish our alerts as fast as possible – it’s all about speed and accuracy. We are delighted to be working with Fidessa, and pleased to be able to offer our new service to its UK community."

Fidessa's products serve around 24,500 users across 1,000 clients globally and are used by 85% of tier-one financial institutions.

smartTrade Technologies  releases  new version of its Order Management System (OMS) and adoption by clients in Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. smartTrade clients have optimised their trading flow by using smartTrade OMS to handle client orders more efficiently across multiple desks, internalise client flows and improve their proprietary hedging strategies. All desks involved in the trading chain can utilize the tool, making sure that any team members can service the client orders instantly from anywhere in the world.

smartTrade OMS allows clients to implement custom strategies across a large number of orders. It is an end-to-end solution that supports both e-orders and manual trading books. It is easy to integrate smartTrade OMS with external systems such as Single Dealer Platforms, existing liquidity feeds and existing front-ends. The latest release includes the externalisation of orders for management by algos and support for custom order types. A comprehensive set of rules for order routing to traders (manual desks) and algos (e-desks) has now been incorporated. Sales desks can use the OMS front-end, the API or an Excel spreadsheet to interact with the OMS. smartTrade offers a highly competitive pricing model, as well as the option to host the solution in the smartTrade private cloud.

A global tier 1 bank highlighted the openness and flexibility of the OMS, stating that “in addition to offering advanced controls, the cross-asset technology enables us to future proof our investment.” A broker client in Europe added “among all the solutions we evaluated, smartTrade OMS is the most feature rich and easiest to integrate into existing environment.”

David Vincent, Chief Executive Officer of smartTrade Technologies, comments “We work closely with our clients to continuously improve our solution. The latest version of smartTrade OMS brings best-in-class functionality, whilst ensuring it continues to integrate well with other smartTrade and Client trading system components. The solution is designed for both global institutions and regional players.” David Vincent concludes, “The openness of our solution, together with the intuitive GUI, using the HTML5 framework and the cross-asset nature of our underlying components, sets us apart in the industry.”

Nigel Gurney was appointed Chief Financial Officer in July 2014.  He is a qualified chartered accountant with 20 years’ experience in the financial services, wholesale distribution and telecommunications industries.  He was previously Chief Financial Officer at Lepe Partners LLP, a specialist independent banking company, prior to which he was Chief Financial Officer of Merchant Securities Group plc and Chief Financial Officer of W.H. Ireland Group plc.

Nigel Gurney, CFO comments: “I am delighted to be joining Lombard Risk at this time and to be part of a team that has achieved demonstrable growth over the last number of years.  Having previously worked in the regulated sector I appreciate the benefits that Lombard Risk’s suite of products brings to financial institutions in this evolving regulatory landscape.  I look forward to assisting the continued development of the company at a time of substantial opportunity for Lombard Risk and its products.”

Chief Executive Officer, John Wisbey, commented on the results:

“I would like to welcome Nigel Gurney to the Board on behalf of myself and my fellow directors.  We are confident that the experience he brings to the Board will be an asset to the company.  He brings with him both good knowledge of AIM from his time as CFO of WH Ireland, and very relevant knowledge of part of the market space in which our regulatory compliance business operates.”