This Week: BNP Paribas; Deutsche Börse/ISS; Nasdaq/Verafin; Tora/TP Icap; Gresham/Data-Xchange

BNP Paribas Asset Management Rolls Out Investment Insights Service for Alexa

BNP Paribas asset management has launched Investment Insights, an information service that is integrated with Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa. The collaboration will allow portfolio managers or investors to access voice-enabled insights on the markets via Alexa devices. such as Echo and FireTV.

The insights will include market updates on the week ahead, daily briefings on the most important content from the day; a weekly recap of the week called The Wrap; a live database of market data called The Data Hub, and a frequently asked questions service about the asset manager.

Investment Insights was built as part of the firm’s broader aim of automating investment processes and client communications. Its launch follows a year-long collaboration between teams and across regions and has been developed using US English, representing 70% of the global user base.

Deutsche Börse Acquires ESG Provider ISS

Deutsche Börse has announced that it will acquire a majority share of approximately 80% in ISS, a provider of environmental, social and governance data and analytics, valuing at $2.275 million.

Genstar Capital and current management will continue to hold a stake of around 20%. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2021 subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

ISS has over 4,000 clients including some of the world’s biggest institutional investors, offering them objective governance and ESG data and research. After the closing of the transaction, ISS will continue to operate with the same editorial independence in its data and research organization that is in place today.

The current executive leadership team, along with CEO Gary Retelny, will co-invest in the transaction and will lead the ISS business after the closing.

Tora Integrates OEMS Platform with TP Icap’s Fusion RFQ

Tora, a provider of trading technology, has integrated its order and execution management system (OEMS) with TP ICAP’s Fusion RFQ engine.

The integration aims to enable Tora’s equity and ETF clients to have access to greater liquidity through Fusion RFQ global pool of over 14,500 instruments and 30-plus liquidity providers.

The new partnership looks to provide more efficiency to equity and ETF execution workflows. Fusion RFQ will feed requests from clients to liquidity providers, who in turn provide two-way prices in the requested size or decline. The RFQ engine will then return the best bid and offer from liquidity providers, allowing clients to execute anonymously or pass.

Trades will then be concluded on TP Icap’s MTF and then settled with Icap Securities Limited in a matched principal trading capacity.

Nasdaq to Acquire AML Platform Verafin

Nasdaq has announced that it has entered into an agreement with Verafin, a provider of anti-financial crime solutions, to acquire the company for $2.75 billion dollars .

Verafin was founded in 2003 and provides more than 2,000 financial institutions in North America with a cloud-based platform for detecting, investigating, and reporting anti-money laundering (AML) and financial fraud. The vendors’ products use analytics, machine learning, shared data insights, visualization, and investigation tools to help firms increase detection accuracy.

The acquisition is intended to strengthen Nasdaq’s existing regulatory technology and anti-financial crime solutions, including Nasdaq Trade and Market Surveillance, its buy-side compliance product, as well as the Nasdaq Automated Investigator for AML.

Gresham Technologies Adds Data-Xchange to Global Partner Ecosystem

Gresham Technologies announced that consultancy firm Data-Xchange Technologies will become a full distribution partner for Gresham in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Data-Xchange is a specialist consultancy that provides process automation services for the financial services industry. Gresham will provide Data-Xchange with a new suite of products to fulfil its customers strategic requirements.