Anna’s new digital token identifiers, TS Imagine offers prediction market data, and more

There are some really good films out there, and sometimes they’re in the cinema. I enjoyed watching The Odyssey recently. I like director Christopher Nolan’s recent kick of “Protagonist creates something clever (like a horse with soldiers inside it or atomic bomb) and then regrets it deeply when that invention is used inevitably for bad purposes.”

I personally can’t wait for his next movie about the creators of AI…

Announced this week

Anna integrates Digital Token Identifiers into service hub

The Association of National Numbering Agencies (Anna) announced that the Anna Service Bureau (ASB) has expanded to include digital token identifiers (DTIs).

The ASB has served as a central hub for instrument reference data from over 120 national numbering agencies since 2001. Covering more than 200 jurisdictions, and free to members, the ASB platform provides single-point access to the broadest and only-directly-sourced compilation of Isin codes. 

From July 25, ASB subscribers have access to XT Isins for crypto assets and DTIs for digital assets, where assigned. Anna says the integration of XT Isins and DTIs marks the next step in enhancing data availability and transparency for digital assets and enables market participants to access consistent and reliable identification data across evolving tokenized securities and crypto asset markets.

TS Imagine integrates prediction markets data into institutional workflows

TS Imagine announced the integration of prediction markets data into its platform, enabling institutional clients to use market-implied event probabilities within existing risk management workflows.

Clients can map event scenarios to exposures and sensitivities across asset classes and use the resulting signal in stress testing, scenario analysis, value-at-risk and sensitivity workflows. The associated analysis updates automatically as market-implied probabilities change.

Canoe Intelligence announces document integration with Schwab Advisor Services

Private markets data provider Canoe Intelligence announced an integration with Schwab Advisor Services. Through a direct connection with Schwab Advisor Center, mutual clients can now receive tax documents and account statements automatically within Canoe, eliminating manual downloads and reducing operational risk.

For firms that currently use Canoe and custody with Schwab, documents tax forms, consolidated statements, and account summaries are delivered directly into Canoe’s platform daily via an encrypted connection. Once ingested, documents are processed through Canoe’s extraction engine, associated with the appropriate accounts, and made available for downstream workflows.

Canoe Intelligence was bought by Bloomberg last week. Check out Nyela’s story to find out more.

Broadridge and Payward Services partner on tokenized corporate governance

Broadridge announced that its governance platform will support shareholder communications and proxy voting for eligible holders of xStocks, the tokenized equities framework developed by Payward Services, Payward’s B2B infrastructure platform.

xStocks is the most widely traded tokenized equities framework in the market by total transaction volume, and now represents the widest range of assets offered by any tokenized equities framework.

Eligible holders of supported tokenized securities available through Payward Services’ xStocks tokenized asset framework will be able to securely authenticate to ProxyVote.com using Web3 authentication, review proxy materials for the underlying securities, and submit their proxy voting preferences digitally.

Quant Insight teams up with FactSet in macro analytics play

Quant Insight, a specialist in macro factor analytics, and FactSet announced an integration in which FactSet will incorporate Quant Insight’s Macro Factor Equity Risk Model (Mferm) into its multi-asset class portfolio analytics platform and provide global distribution to its client base.

The collaboration makes Mferm’s macro risk analytics available inside the research, attribution and holdings workflows FactSet clients rely on every day, placing macro exposure measurement alongside the style and sector metrics investment teams already track.

Bottom-up equity portfolios carry substantial macro exposure that traditional style-factor models were not built to isolate. Rather than estimating factor returns from known security exposures, Mferm starts from observed macro factor returns such as growth, rates, credit, inflation, FX, commodities and risk aversion, and estimates each security’s exposure to them.

OptionMetrics and Equality Asset Management partner on market expansion initiative

Options data and analytics provider OptionMetrics and Equality Asset Management, a Boston-based growth equity firm, announced a partnership to accelerate OptionMetrics’ product development and market expansion.

Equality partners with software and technology companies that hold leading positions in their markets. OptionMetrics says its investment gives the firm additional resources to reach new customer segments, deepen coverage across global markets, and deliver new capabilities to the market faster.

Portfolio managers, traders, quantitative researchers, institutional investors, hedge fund managers and academics worldwide use OptionMetrics’ IvyDB databases and analytics to construct and test investment strategies, conduct empirical research, and assess risk.

Rimes launches AI data architecture for asset managers

Rimes has introduced a unified data and intelligence architecture designed for asset owners, asset managers and asset servicers to make better decisions and scale faster with AI-enabled data and workflows. The architecture, billed by the firm as the “Intelligence Fabric for Capital Markets” is backed by Rimes’ data network, used by more than 400 institutional clients and backed by more than 1,000 data partners.

Rimes says the architecture is built around four pillars: a trusted data network, connected intelligence across the enterprise, decision-grade workflows and always-on operational control.

What you might have missed from us

Cyber audit leaves Eiopa with a credibility problem

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, one of three supervisory bodies tasked with overseeing the 19 tech vendors that have been designated as critical under the European Union’s Digital Operational Resilience Act, had data and security weaknesses exposed in October last year.

The findings have dented Eiopa’s credibility as a lead overseer under Dora and raised concerns about the security of the Solvency II data that it stores and disseminates.

People Moves: Capital Bank, BMLL, Cboe Europe, Options Technology, and more

A look at the past month’s people moves in the capital markets tech and data space.

Can pairing autonomous AI agents with digital cash transform finance?

A new paper from Moody’s Ratings details how agentic systems are shifting from supportive tools to economic actors. While this could bring more efficient workflows and faster transactions, it may also increase financial, operational, and cyber risks, WatersTechnology’s Mya Jheeta reports.

Is this tokenization’s golden opportunity?

In this week’s Waters Wrap, Nyela examines tokenization, an idea that started off nebulous but over the last five years has become widely viewed as potentially the next major improvement in capital markets.

Broadridge’s Tokenization Pulse Study of 200 North American firms found that 84% of participants indicated tokenization was strategically important to their organizations. As more and more financial firms show their readiness to proceed with a technology once viewed as a novelty, Nyela wonders whether this year will be the moment tokenization goes mainstream.

A tidal wave of token costs threatens landfall

Asia editor Wei-Shen Wong, editor-in-chief Anthony Malakian and I surveyed a smorgasbord of end-users, technologists, and researchers at large financial institutions for this feature on the spiraling costs associated with AI token usage. Financial firms are caught in the dilemma of letting their engineers innovate with AI tools while keeping a watchful eye on margins.

Or, to put it simply, as the data governance head at a large US asset manager tells WatersTechnology, “This is real cost that’s going to kick the shit out of your P&L.”

It’s a real humdinger, if I do say so myself.

Waters Wavelength Ep. 356: When software fails

Tony and Shen go through this story about Nasdaq’s trade surveillance software failing to send alerts.

In other news

China’s A.I. Is Surging Across Africa. That Should Worry Silicon Valley The New York Times

Wall Street got a huge shock earlier this year with the release of China’s DeepSeek model, which was cheaper than while being functionally similar to Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT,. The New York Times reports that China’s models are publicly available to download and modify without payment or approval, which is increasing their popularity and usage across the world.

The popularity comes at a trade-off, which is that Chinese firms are struggling to make money from their products, and users face questions about the technology’s ties to China. However, for African nations where costs matter, and links with China are not interrogated as deeply as in the US, the rate of adoption is significant.

“‘Why use an expensive Ferrari to do the school run when a Toyota hatchback can do the same?’ said Moses Kemibaro, a Nairobi entrepreneur who runs a digital marketing agency, Dotsavvy, adding that Chinese models can be up to 90 percent less expensive when including costs like computing infrastructure,” the article reads.