The Investors Exchange (IEX) added two senior hires in Bill Guinan and Jonathan Yam, to lead business and technology development, respectively. Guinan, the new Head of Business Development, spent the last 14 years at Bernstein, most recently as Head of U.S. Sector Trading. Yam joins IEX as Head of Technology Development, where he will lead the team responsible for building and refining new products and features to enhance IEX’s performance. He was previously Director at Citi, where he had global responsibility for the development of electronic trading systems. According to a story in...

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said that it is tapping Microsoft Corp.’s cloud-based services to boost its blockchain platform, aiming to make it easier, faster and cheaper for companies to build and deploy blockchain applications. Microsoft’s Azure will power the platform, named Quorum, which will allow enterprises to build new blockchain applications in as little as a few weeks without needing as much expertise. JPMorgan built Quorum about four years ago on the blockchain-based Ethereum network. The bank also uses Quorum for internal purposes, such as to experiment with how...

JPMorgan Chase, a top player in the $5.1 trillion-a-day global currency market has started applying a new technology that enables machine-trading programs to learn from previous trades and search for the most profitable way to execute them, according to a story in Reuters news. Algorithmic trading is a rapidly growing trend in currency markets where banks have cut back on trading teams, relying more on automated computing strategies to trade efficiently. Algos are used by market makers to search for platforms with deeper liquidity pools or to break up large orders to reduce market impact....

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. announced that it has acquired Rockall, a provider of securities-based lending (SBL) and collateral management solutions for wealth management firms and commercial banks. Rockall currently enables the management of more than $3 trillion worth of collateral daily for some of the world’s top banks, and 10 of the top 30 U.S. banks use Rockall’s technology to streamline collateral management, safeguard against credit risk and enhance lending. Two key offerings Rockall provides include: a cloud-based wealth lending solution, FASTNET (which...

Vela, an independent provider of trading and market access technology for global multi-asset electronic trading, and Enyx, a developer and provider of ultra-low latency technologies and solutions for the financial industry, announced a partnership to provide Vela clients with access to Enyx’s FPGA-based technology, initially focused on ultra-low latency market data solutions. The two firms have completed a Proof of Concept, integrating the Enyx nxFeed, an ultra-low latency FPGA-enabled feed handler, into Vela’s software-based feed handlers to deliver wire-speed performance and...

On Thursday, April 25, FIF submitted comments to FINRA on FINRA Rule 4370 (BCP).  To view the content of FIF’s comments, please click here.

On Wednesday, April 24, the Securities and Exchange Commission granted FIF’s request for an extension of SEC Rule 606’s May 20, 2019 compliance date.  To view the extension notice, please click here.  FIF continues to work with Commission Trading and Markets Staff on additional guidance required by industry members to meet the expectations of the Rule.  If you would like to join FIF’s SEC Rule 606 Working Group, please update your profile here or email the program office at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to...

FIF CAT Working Group - FIF reviewed the remaining issues raised by FIF Members on recently published FDID guidance, discussed remaining spec issues, introduced the proposed CAT Web Portal and provided a status update on FIX to CAT Mapping.  FIF SEC Rule 606 Working Group - Discussed the SEC's grant of FIF's extension request to extend the 606 compliance date to October 1, 201 and decided upon next steps we need to take in our discussions with the SEC.  FIF will review and finalize a list of questions/proposed responses to remaining FAQs/guidance on Tuesday, April...

FIF is pleased to announce that Abel Noser Solutions has joined the FIF Community.