Abide Financial Looking to Scale with ICAP Acquisition
Markets operator adds regulatory reporting specialists to post-trade services
With its acquisition of regulatory reporting specialist Abide Financial, markets operator and post-trade services provider ICAP plans to offer a sophisticated end-to-end product for regulatory reporting.
ICAP first invested in Abide last summer, and the acquistion was announced this week. Abide is now a subsidiary of ICAP's post-trade risk information (PTRI) division. Neither party has disclosed the terms of the acquisition.
"The purpose of the acquisition from the ICAP post-trade perspective is to provide our clients with a very simple, holistic solution for regulatory finance reporting," says PTRI CEO Jenny Knott. "We can connect Abide to Traiana and our other PTRI services, leveraging their subject matter expertise."
Traiana, ICAP's transaction processing business, will form the primary interface with clients. It will feed transaction data into Abide's architecture for validation and enrichment before it is sent out for reporting. Abide is an approved reporting mechanism for the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, a regulatory reporting mechanism for REMIT energy market regulation, and is currently awaiting approval to become a trade repository under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation. ICAP and Abide say they do not anticipate a difficult integration process, as their technology is fully interoperable.
Abide Financial welcomed the acquisition as an opportunity to accelerate growth and scale its technology, producing a much more complete solution for clients.
"The compliance-related challenges our clients face have intensified tremendously," says CEO Collin Coleman. "What firms want to buy in this space has changed a lot in the last 18 months, and we see that evolving a lot in the future. Looking at the breadth and mix of services and how they can all come together to form a coherent unit, we realized very quickly there is a whole world of permutations around validations, data enrichment, reporting data under multiple jurisdictions and receiving data through multiple sources and sending it on to multiple endpoints.
"Getting a complete service—that kind of full coverage and capability—is something we would have been building out in areas that it's fair to say are not really our core expertise. Being part of ICAP, we can marry our technology capabilities with the complementary APA and connectivity components."
Coleman says that by scaling up its offering, Abide will be able to take in more volume through the reporting hub and offer access to more regulatory endpoints.
"Finally, the trend we currently notice in the regtech market is being able to cope with large data storage, safety, management and reconciliation," he adds. "Having the agile cloud-based technology and utilizing ICAP companies' capabilities, we hope to become a leader in the market for regulatory data management."
Only users who have a paid subscription or are part of a corporate subscription are able to print or copy content.
To access these options, along with all other subscription benefits, please contact info@waterstechnology.com or view our subscription options here: http://subscriptions.waterstechnology.com/subscribe
You are currently unable to print this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
You are currently unable to copy this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (point 2.4), printing is limited to a single copy.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (clause 2.4), an Authorised User may only make one copy of the materials for their own personal use. You must also comply with the restrictions in clause 2.5.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
More on Emerging Technologies
Waters Wavelength Ep. 295: Vision57’s Steve Grob
Steve Grob joins the podcast to discuss all things interoperability, AI, and the future of the OMS.
S&P debuts GenAI ‘Document Intelligence’ for Capital IQ
The new tool provides summaries of lengthy text-based documents such as filings and earnings transcripts and allows users to query the documents with a ChatGPT-style interface.
The Waters Cooler: Are times really a-changin?
New thinking around buy-build? Changing tides in after-hours trading? Trump is back? Lots to get to.
A tech revolution in an old-school industry: FX
FX is in a state of transition, as asset managers and financial firms explore modernizing their operating processes. But manual processes persist. MillTechFX’s Eric Huttman makes the case for doubling down on new technology and embracing automation to increase operational efficiency in FX.
Waters Wavelength Ep. 294: Grasshopper’s James Leong
James Leong, CEO of Grasshopper, a proprietary trading firm based in Singapore, joins to discuss market reforms.
The Waters Cooler: Big Tech, big fines, big tunes
Amazon stumbles on genAI, Google gets fined more money than ever, and Eliot weighs in on the best James Bond film debate.
AI set to overhaul market data landscape by 2029, new study finds
A new report by Burton-Taylor says the intersection of advanced AI and market data has big implications for analytics, delivery, licensing, and more.
New Bloomberg study finds demand for election-related alt data
In a survey conducted with Coalition Greenwich, the data giant revealed a strong desire among asset managers, economists and analysts for more alternative data from the burgeoning prediction markets.