NSCC extends hours, Tradeweb finds on-chain success, and more

This week is the epitome of British summertime sports, and nothing makes me happier.

Wimbledon—the best Grand Slam, in my opinion—has begun. And even though there are no huge British players, Serena Williams returns to play doubles with her sister, and Djokovic will see if he can win his next Slam. Maybe a wild card will even sneak through the draw.

Silverstone, the British Grand Prix, is also this weekend. Let’s hope at least one of the five British drivers makes it to the podium!

And in World Cup news, England somehow made it through the round of 32. Thank God for Harry Kane.

Announced this week

LMAX, Standard Chartered execute first live digital-asset prime brokerage trades

LMAX Group, the global cross-asset marketplace for FX and digital assets, has executed the first digital-asset prime brokerage trades with Standard Chartered, marking a significant milestone in the development of institutional digital asset market infrastructure. The pilot transactions demonstrate a bank-grade digital asset intermediation model for spot bitcoin (XBT/USD) and ether (XET/USD) with T+1 settlement through Standard Chartered’s UK branch. Standard Chartered is one of the first global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) to execute such trades.

The trades were executed on LMAX Group’s regulated institutional digital asset venue, LMAX Digital. Standard Chartered Prime Brokerage acted as the credit intermediary between counterparties, integrating LMAX Group’s execution and post-trade environment with settlement completed through Standard Chartered’s digital asset custody platform.

Tradeweb facilitates on-chain US Treasuries transactions on the Canton Network

Tradeweb announced the successful completion of a real-time transaction involving tokenized US Treasuries. Executed on Tradeweb, the trade paired an on-chain US Treasury with tokenized cash (USDCx), while leveraging the Canton Network’s synchronized settlement capabilities.

Franklin Templeton transferred a tokenized US Treasury security to Virtu Financial in exchange for USDCx. Tradeweb provided the execution platform and price discovery, while the Canton Network enabled synchronized on-chain settlement between the two assets. Transaction participants included Blockdaemon, Digital Asset, Franklin Templeton, Societe Generale, Tradeweb and Virtu Financial.

DTCC’s NSCC goes live with extended clearing hours

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation announced its subsidiary, the National Securities Clearing Corporation, has extended its clearing hours to 24x5 availability, from Sundays at 8 pm ET to Fridays at 8 pm ET, supporting overnight trading activity from alternative trading systems and exchanges. The move to 24x5 trading reflects growing global demand for increased access to US markets as investors seek greater flexibility to trade outside traditional hours.

Regnology to acquire Fed Reporter

Regnology, a provider of regulatory, risk, and supervisory technology, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Fed Reporter, a US provider of regulatory reporting solutions for banks, credit unions, and bank holding companies.

The acquisition marks a milestone in Regnology’s US expansion, creating comprehensive regulatory reporting coverage across the American financial landscape and extending its reach to more than 4,000 institutions from global banks to community lenders.

ETS Connect UK reports strong uptake in first week of UK bond CT

ETS Connect UK, the consolidated tape provider (CTP) for UK fixed-income markets, reported that in its first week, more than 1,600,000 licenses have been issued. This includes more than 50 licenses for users and redistributors who have onboarded directly with the CTP, and more than 1,600,000 licenses via redistributors, the vast majority being for individual users.

ETS Connect UK has confirmed that it will produce a monthly data quality (DQ) summary report based on the DQ Framework for the CTP and has confirmed its intention to open-source the full suite of data quality validation logic underpinning the tape.

AutoRek enhances AutoRek ARIA

AutoRek launched an enhancement to AutoRek ARIA, its regulatory‑grade intelligence engine for reconciliation and financial controls. The latest release introduces new capabilities that reduce manual effort, accelerate configuration, and strengthen governance to enable financial institutions to automate reconciliation at scale without compromising the oversight required in regulated environments.

Duco launches agentic maturity model

Data management provider Duco published the Agentic Maturity Model for Reconciliation, a best-practice framework designed to help COOs and capital markets operations leaders understand where they stand on the road to AI-powered reconciliation, and chart a clear course forward.

What you might have missed from us

EU exchanges shake up data policies ahead of new pricing rules

The European Union’s financial markets regulator, ESMA, introduced Regulatory Technical Standards on the Reasonable Commercial Basis with a deadline of August 23. But exchanges across the EU have interpreted the regulation differently and have altered their market data pricing policies, with the key changes being the replacement of value‑based pricing with cost‑based pricing and the grouping of their market data clients into a single category based on use case.

The CAT’s health crisis continues

The US’s Consolidated Audit Trail is once again back in the news, as the market surveillance platform struggles to realize the vision set out for it more than a decade ago.

The intent of the SEC’s Rule 613 is to create “a comprehensive consolidated audit trail that would allow regulators to efficiently and accurately track all activity throughout the US markets in National Market System (NMS) securities.” But whether the CAT in its current state has actually achieved that remains open to debate.

Reimagining fraud intelligence across trading systems

Researchers at IBM and Wipro say that trading firms need to transition from static fraud monitoring to adaptive behavioral intelligence embedded directly within the trading lifecycle.

In this guest article from Wipro, IBM, and IBM Consulting, researchers say that as machine-led financial ecosystems continue to evolve, fraud detection can no longer remain a backwards-looking control mechanism. Instead, it must become an area of in-house risk management that relies on continuous, adaptive, and context-aware intelligence capabilities embedded across the entire trading value chain.

Managing AI models is reshaping three lines of defense, say banks

Banks’ use of AI models is putting pressure on the traditional three lines model, with risk managers arguing first-line teams should take more responsibility for continuous testing, monitoring and evidence of control effectiveness.

The EU AI Act is forcing banks to classify AI systems by risk tier, with high-risk uses such as HR, credit scoring and pricing models carrying heavier obligations. Speakers at WatersTechnology’s sibling publication Risk.net’s Risk Live Europe conference on June 30 warned product owners may not always recognize when seemingly routine tools fall into those categories.

Waters Wavelength Podcast Ep. 355: Faculty’s David Bholat

This week, David Bholat, director for professional and financial services at Faculty, joins the podcast to talk about AI deployment.

In other news

How companies are managing AI token spend, The Wall Street Journal

Every financial institution using AI cares about tokens. The Wall Street Journal’s Belle Lin says that the increasing use of AI agents on Wall Street is leading companies to find new and innovative ways to keep their costs from spiraling out of control.

Sources voiced concerns that unconstrained access to AI tools is equivalent to giving users an unlimited company credit card. They say that costs have grown exponentially as interest in AI agents has grown.

Some ways of keeping costs down include making each department responsible for their own token management, and instituting “show back” clauses for departments to prove that their tools were worth the tokens used.

“Goldman Sachs predicts that AI agents will increase token consumption by 24 times over the next four years, and business AI agents will increase token consumption by 55 times by 2040,” Lin writes.