Our free FinTech update also covers news from Krungsri & Murex, Jeff Gooch & Quorsus, Schroders & SteelEye, and GLEIF’s new role for banks.
Tokyo Stock Exchange Said to Relaunch Oct. 2
The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) is slated to resume trading on Friday, Oct. 2, after an unprecedented halt to trading for a full day because of hardware glitches that prevented the distribution of market data, according to TSE officials.
“Currently, the Tokyo Stock Exchange is proceeding without problems toward resumption of trading at arrowhead and TSE plans to conduct trading on auction market and ToSTNeT [Tokyo Stock Exchange Trading NeTwork] market as usual from tomorrow and after,” according to an official statement from TSE officials on Oct. 1. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to investors and market participants.”
“Today [Oct. 1], due to a hardware failure, the switchover from the failed device to the backup device did not work properly, and as a result, market information could not be distributed,” according to an official statement. “TSE is currently planning to replace the hardware and taking steps, including other maintenance, to ensure normal trading from tomorrow onwards.”
TSE officials decided not to attempt to restart trading on Thursday.
“If the system were to reboot during the day, it would cause confusion for investors and market participants, which would make it difficult to execute smooth trading,” according to the TSE, which decided “to halt all listed symbols … after consulting with market participants.”
The glitch was not caused by a cyber-attack because the IT platforms involved did not have external connections, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Essentially, the magnetic-disk devices used to warehouse trading information failed and the backup hardware systems also malfunctioned, according to the WSJ and TSE statements.
Krungsri & Murex in Long-Term Partnership
Murex, which specializes in trading, risk, and processing solutions for capital markets, reports that Krungsri (Bank of Ayudhya PCL), the fifth-largest bank in Thailand and a Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group subsidiary, has employed the Murex platform for a “transformation of its IT infrastructure.”
The Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is Japan’s largest financial group and one of the world’s largest and most diversified financial organizations, the Murex statement notes, so “Krungsri benefits from MUFG’s global network along with its own decades of local expertise.”
“We chose Murex to be our long-term partner because of its longstanding expertise in complex data migration and re-platforming,” Tak Bunnag, Krungsri’s head of the global markets group, says in a prepared statement.
Ex-MarkitServ CEO Becomes Quorsus Non-Executive Director
Jeff Gooch
Quorsus, which provides of consultancy services to financial institutions, reports the appointment of Jeff Gooch, a former MarkitServ executive and financial-services veteran, as its first non-executive director.
Gooch, who joined Quorsus in September, will “provide strategic insight into business planning, financial governance, and management decision making,” according to a statement from the vendor.
During his three decades in the financial services industry, Gooch has helped build and grow financial technology businesses, officials say. He began his career at Ernst & Young, where he led the financial management consulting team for financial services for eight years. He has also served as a managing director at Morgan Stanley for 10 years.
After Morgan Stanley, Gooch served for nine years as an executive committee member at Markit, including serving as CEO and chairman of MarkitServ and most recently as Group chief financial officer (CFO) before retiring, officials say.
Schroders Deploys SteelEye’s Compliance Offerings
Investment management giant Schroders has deployed compliance technology and data analytics from vendor SteelEye.
Steeleye’s offerings are meant to “provide clients with full visibility of their entire MiFID II transaction reporting workflow, including efficient and automated tools that enable them to easily and seamlessly manage any over or under-reporting, as well as data validation errors,” according to a statement.
“The SteelEye implementation has helped us to improve the level of control and accuracy we have around our MIFID II transaction reporting,” said Keith Frimpong, global head of operations change at Schroders, in a prepared statement.
“We selected SteelEye because of the quality of their technology, the regulatory expertise demonstrated by their team and their willingness to support our tight implementation timelines.”
The London-based firm deployed the SteelEye offerings in July 2020.
SteelEye’s services include “regulatory reporting for MiFID II and EMIR, trade and communications surveillance, best execution, transaction cost analysis, record keeping, trade reconstruction, analytics,” among others, per the statement.
GLEIF Creates ‘Validation Agent’ Role for Banks
The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) reports that financial institutions (FIs) can adopt a new “Validation Agent” role within the Global LEI System to realize cost, efficiency and customer experience benefits, officials say.
By acting as Validation Agents, firms can “simplify LEI issuance for their clients, reduce time-to-revenue, and future proof their institutions for digital innovation. The Validation Agent Framework is a new operational model in the Global LEI System,” officials say.
“By leveraging their know-your-customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML) and other regulated ‘business-as-usual’ onboarding processes, Validation Agents can now obtain an LEI for their customers when verifying a client’s identity during initial onboarding or during a standard client refresh update,” according to a GLIEF statement.
“Until now, labor-intensive and time-consuming legal document and data collection procedures, which are conducted as standard to verify the identity of a client entity within a bank’s onboarding process, have been replicated within the Global LEI System by a Local Operating Unit (LOU), as part of the LEI issuance process,” GLEIF officials say