AFTAs 2021: Most innovative third-party technology vendor (trading, risk and compliance)—LIST

OVERVIEW

There are a number of challenges facing capital markets firms on both sides of the industry when it comes to trade and market surveillance, not least of which is implementing a platform with the intelligence, sophistication and scalability to be genuinely fit for purpose. They can either build such a platform in-house—which typically costs a small fortune, requires highly skilled engineers/developers and many months or years of work—or they can roll out a platform from one of the small number of third-party providers in the space. 

THE SOLUTION

LIST’s LookOut platform provides investment firms and trading venues with a set of technological tools for market abuse surveillance, regulatory reporting and business analytics. 

The latest innovation within LookOut relates to the coverage of the FX Global Code, a set of good practice principles in the foreign exchange market, developed to provide a common set of guidelines to promote the integrity and effective functioning of the wholesale FX market. LookOut’s surveillance module now supports compliance with the trading-related principles of the code. 

LookOut’s data model has been extended to incorporate FX-specific fields, expanding the surveillance capabilities of the existing detection patterns. In addition, new FX-specific patterns have also been added.

WHAT’S TO COME

LIST is set to introduce AI functionality within LookOut. The firm’s research group has released a machine learning and AI toolkit and is implementing an algorithm based on a machine learning model that analyzes user behavior when interacting with items.

The new algorithm will reduce the effort of monitoring market surveillance alarms that typically falls to compliance personnel. 

WHY THEY WON

It wasn’t long ago that only the very largest buy-side and sell-side firms possessed trade and market surveillance platforms. Now, pretty much all capital markets firms need fir-for-purpose market surveillance, regulatory reporting and business analytics platforms, not only to support their various regulatory commitments but also to ensure that their own staff are playing by the rules. LIST’s LookOut platform offers not only multi-asset class support (including support for the FX Global Code), but compliance with a wide variety of global regulations across regions and jurisdictions.