IHS Markit
In a recent report from IHS Markit, the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) has revealed faltering US business activity and a slowdown in US private sector output growth in May. IHS Markit’s Flash US Composite PMI Output Index, which accounts for services and manufacturing data from IHS Markit’s PMI surveys, came in at 50.9 in May, […]
IHS Markit is partnering with Cobalt through its MarkitSERV business to deliver and sell post-trade processing services for FX, and is also making a strategic investment in the firm.“In working together, MarkitSERV and Cobalt will offer a shared post-trade infrastructure designed to replace legacy technology and manual processes, bringing increased efficiency and reduced operational risk to the FX market,” says IHS Markit in a release issued today.The integration between the firms is already complete, with trade data flowing from customers and trading venues via MarkitSERV into the Cobalt platform.
German asset manager 7orca Asset Management AG has expanded its use of IHS Markit’s ThinkFolio solution to include its order management and portfolio modeling solution.
Formed in 2017, 7orca is an independent German asset manager that has been using thinkFolio for over a year to support its currency overlay and short volatility investment strategies for institutional clients.
“Since establishing 7orca, we have focused on providing our clients with a quantitative investment process to actively hedge currency risks,” says Jasper Duex, CIO at 7orca Asset Management.
IHS Markit has introduced new, cloud-based technology for post-trade processing of OTC derivatives trades. Called TradeServ, the platform launched in September for matching, confirming and clearing trades of NDFs.
In total, 32 banks and asset managers are now live with TradeServ, which uses microservices architecture and cloud infrastructure to make the platform “flexible, scalable and reliable”, the firm says. It aims to provide customers with better access to trade data, easier integration and more continuous service upgrades in response to changing regulation and industry needs.
IHS Markit has announced that MarkitSERV will now offer integration with BidFX, an execution management system (EMS), for straight through post-trade processing of FX trades.
In working with BidFX and other FX trading venues on its network, MarkitSERV aims to deliver a comprehensive, flexible straight through processing (STP) solution for FX trading, which includes a hosted service to disseminate trades from execution venues to clients’ internal trade capture and risk systems. The low latency service is designed to eliminate manual trade booking and provides real-time trade notification, position and P&L updates, confirmation of dealt trades, and enhanced operation and risk control.
IHS Markit’s MarkitSERV has expanded its global network of derivatives clearinghouses by connecting to Asigna, the clearinghouse for Mexican listed and standardised derivatives.
With the new connection, it will provide standardised workflow and connectivity for matching, confirming and clearing Mexican peso TIIE 28 swaps.
“With the connection between MarkitSERV and Asigna, we can offer our clients an efficient and secure channel to transmit confirmed TIIE swap data to our clearinghouse,” says Catalina Clavé Almeida, CEO at Asigna. “It also helps global banks on the MarkitSERV network do business in our market.”
It seems that increasingly, some FX firms want to adopt the business models deployed so successfully by the large technology giants that have emerged from Silicon Valley.
Banks talk about developing their single-dealer platforms to mimic the Amazon model of being able to supply everything that their customer needs within one platform.
At least one trading venue is talking about moving to the Facebook model of charging nothing for the actual technology platform that it provides, because it will instead derive profits from the data generated by that platform.
For the past few years the financial services industry has been abuzz discussing how new fintech solutions are going to change the way that the industry operates.
Venture capital (VC) firms have been throwing money at fintechs, banks have been launching incubator programmes and innovation labs, and existing technology vendors have been re-branding themselves all to try and take advantage of the fintech hype.
As such, it’s nearly impossible to have a conversation about the impact of fintech without someone talking about the potential for “disruption” within financial services. And yet, certainly within FX specifically, it remains hard to really identify any tangible evidence of this disruption thus far.
IHS Markit has announced new trade technology solutions from its MarkitServ unit that enable full automation of settlement and margin payments in the cross-currency swaps market.
Cross-currency swaps expose counterparties to settlement risk due to the high value of initial and final principal exchanges that take place in what was recently measured to be a $30 trillion market. New automation, workflow and integrations between MarkitServ and both CLS and LCH SwapAgent enable firms to automate swaps payments, including initial and final notional exchange settlements through CLS and variation margin payments with LCH SwapAgent.
IHS Markit has hired Randy Hebert as director, FX business development, APAC; Stuart Crooks as director, FX business development, EMEA; and Steven Singh as product development manager, FX trading.
In his new role, Hebert will be responsible for APAC FX business development and workings with regional sales groups to drive FX technology partnerships. He will report to Julian Chesser, APAC head of Markitserv.
Hebert joins IHS Markit from First Derivatives, where he served as a director of business development. He has more than 25 years of expertise in FX, interest rates, derivatives, structured products and alternative investments – in trading, risk management and marketing functions.
