The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and Nasdaq, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ) have signed an agreement which extends the surveillance technology relationship between IIROC and Nasdaq's SMARTS. In this new phase, IIROC will increase its capabilities in advancing its cross-market, multi-asset surveillance across five stock exchanges and eight Equity Alternative Trading Systems.

"By allowing us to be more agile and flexible, the system will provide a solid foundation for the evolution of IIROC's market supervision in the years ahead and bring us one step closer to our vision of providing leading-edge market surveillance," said Victoria Pinnington, Senior Vice President, Market Regulation and Policy.  "This state-of-the art system offers new tools and approaches including machine learning that our team will leverage to more efficiently monitor for abusive behaviour."

"By supporting IIROC over the past several years in its rigorous efforts in monitoring and protecting Canada's markets, this has complemented Nasdaq's relentless commitment to leveraging technology to strengthen the integrity of the global capital markets," said Lars Ottersgård, Executive Vice President and Head of Market Technology, Nasdaq. "We look forward to continuing this successful partnership and working with our clients in maintaining a fair, transparent and safe global marketplace and ensuring that firms have the tools to do so as well."

SMARTS has been the industry benchmark for real-time, cross-market, cross-asset surveillance for 22+ years. Used by over 3500 compliance professionals around the world, SMARTS solutions currently power surveillance at 47 marketplaces, 17 regulators and 140+ market participants.