FIF CAT Tech Spec Subgroup - FIF began the meeting with a solicitation of feedback from the group on major issues with v1.1 draft 2 of the CAT Industry Member Technical Spec. FIF then shifted focus to the follow-up items from last week's discussion on sections 5-5.1 (options).  We then continued the review of the CAT options reporting requirements, starting with section 5.4.  FIF SEC Rule 606 Working Group - FIF reviewed the content of the in-person meeting with the SEC Division of Trading and Markets. The group discussed next steps, including creation of FAQs, the...

FIF met with the SEC Division of Trading and Markets Staff on Rule 606 on Thursday, April 11th.  FIF discussed several remaining challenges with respect to the implementatation of Rule 606.  If you would like more detail on the content of FIF's meeting with the Commission, please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

FIF is pleased to announce that BMO Capital Markets has joined the FIF Community.

Refinitiv and MarketAxess Holdings Inc. have entered into an agreement to redistribute MarketAxess’ fixed income market data to Refinitiv’s customers via its Elektron Data Platform. The data made available through Refinitiv as a part of the agreement includes MarketAxess’ award-winning Composite+™ and Axess All pricing tools. Composite+ is an algorithmic pricing engine for corporate bonds that leverages a range of proprietary and industry data sources, with updates up to every 15 seconds on over 24,000 bonds. It combines public data from the FINRA Trade Reporting and...

Deutsche Bank has gone live as the first German investment bank to offer client clearing for credit default swaps through LCH CDSClear. Asset management firms MEAG and Union Investment are the first buy-side clients to connect to CDSClear via Deutsche Bank, clearing both European and US credit default swaps at LCH.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the banking sector by detecting fraud in financial transactions based on a pre-defined set of rules. In 2018, the banking industry alone invested $41.1 billion in AI, which includes the cost savings and efficiencies of introducing AI technology compared to keeping existing infrastructures and processes. With the projected increase in the number of AI projects that are launched and become commercially deployed, the business value of AI in banking is projected to reach $300 billion by 2030, according to global business information...

Jamie Forese, the No. 2 executive at Citigroup Inc., is retiring, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Forese, a 34-year veteran of Citigroup, is the bank’s president and runs the Institutional Clients Group, the arm of the bank that includes investment banking and trading. Mr. Forese will be succeeded as the head of institutional banking by his deputy, Paco Ybarra. Mr. Ybarra took up the deputy role last October, in anticipation of Mr. Forese’s eventual retirement. Mr. Ybarra, who began working for Citigroup in Spain in the 1980s, was also the bank’s...

FlexTrade, a global provider in broker-neutral, execution and order management trading systems, has announced its partnership with OpenFin. The partnership provides application interoperability and improves workflow management for buy-side traders using FlexTrade’s execution management system, FlexTRADER, and FlexTrade’s out-of-the-box cloud-based trading system, FlexNOW, the first cloud EMS available via Amazon Web Services, according to a story in MarketsMedia. By partnering with OpenFin, traders using FlexTrade products are able to integrate third-party vendor applications...

Credit Suisse has expanded access to its next generation algorithmic trading platform by launching the service in China through a partnership with its joint venture, Credit Suisse Founder Securities (CSFS) according to a story in The Trade news. CSFS, which launched its A-shares brokerage business in 2016, can now offer access to Credit Suisse’s Advanced Execution Services (AES) to onshore institutional investors, as well as various other qualified investors, to trade China A-shares. Clients can use the platform, which deploys data science, machine learning technology and quantitative...