MAS and Google Cloud Push Climate FinTech and other news
In other news, a whistleblower gets $17 million, a key GBST client renews, BNPP Securities Services embraces digital custody, and a new SEF is born.
MAS and Google launch the Climate FinTech Initiative
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Google Cloud report that they are launching an initiative “to drive innovation, incubation and scaling of climate FinTech solutions in Asia.”
The Point Carbon Zero program is “a collaboration under MAS’ Project Greenprint”, which will spur climate FinTech solutions to “strengthen the financial sector’s access to accurate and detailed climate-related data, for more efficient distribution of capital towards green and sustainable projects.” officials say.
For its part, Google Cloud is slated to launch “the world’s first open source cloud platform dedicated to climate finance,” officials say.
Fintech providers will be asked to propose “solutions to address a range of climate finance problem statements made by stakeholders from the financial sector and the real economy,” officials say.
Then 100 solutions “will be shortlisted for further development and tested with a pool of 1,000 financial institutions,” officials say.
Main functions of the program are:
- Mentoring and funding;
- Access to data: “Participants can leverage the aggregated climate disclosure, environmental and public data that Project Greenprint aims to collect, and over 200 public data sets spanning various sectors hosted on Google Cloud;”
- Participants can cut their carbon footprint; and
- Data sharing: “New climate-related datasets generated by these solutions may be made available to Project Greenprint’s partners, subject to data owner consent.”
Whistleblower receives $17 million award from SEC
SEC officials report that the regulator has awarded an award of more than $17 million to a whistleblower “who provided information and assistance in a covered action and related action.”
The whistleblower’s information helped “SEC staff open a new investigation that led to the successful covered action. The whistleblower also provided SEC enforcement staff with detailed information and documents throughout the investigation. Furthermore, because the same information led to the success of the related action, the whistleblower is also entitled to an award based on amounts collected in the related action,” according to the official announcement.
“Today’s award underscores the SEC’s commitment to rewarding deserving whistleblowers who provide valuable information and exemplary cooperation that advance the agency’s enforcement efforts,” said Creola Kelly, chief of the SEC’s Office of Whistleblowers, in an official statement.
The SEC, which has awarded 278 individuals about $1.3 billion since 2012, makes its payments through an investor protection fund established by Congress funded solely through monetary penalties paid to the SEC by securities law violators, officials said.
More about the whistleblower program is at www.sec.gov/whistleblower.
UK’s Novia Financial renews GBST contract
UK wealth management firm Novia Financial has renewed its contract with securities operations provider GBST as Novia intends to “scale assets and client numbers” to meet growth targets, officials say.
GBST will continue to provide Novia, based in Bath, England, with the Composer suite of front- and back-office systems that support the firm’s administration of wealth management services, officials said.
“Novia will continue to benefit from GBST’s ongoing investment in its technology, including the modern API [application programming interface] enabled microservices architecture underpinning Composer, which supports over three million accounts and £180bn of assets under management in the UK, officials say.
“The platform market is at an inflection point. If it is to support advisory firms in meeting the evolving needs of their clients, it is imperative that platforms find ways to offer more flexible technology solutions that are increasingly digital, data-driven and heavily integrated with other technologies,” says Patrick Mill, CEO of Novia, in a prepared statement.
BNPP Securities Services Losses METACO & Fireblocks
BNP Paribas Securities Services is entering the digital custody services game via partnership fintech providers Fireblocks and METACO, officials say.
The arrangement will lead to the development of digital asset custody offerings so that BNPP Securities Services clients can “issue, transfer and hold regulated digital assets efficiently and securely,” officials say.
“The bank has chosen Fireblocks as its hot wallet, tokenization and connectivity infrastructure layer. As a first step, BNP Paribas Securities Services will use Fireblocks’ solution in their ongoing experimentation with settlement and custody of regulated security tokens,” according to an official statement. Indeed, BNP Paribas Securities Services already worked with Fireblocks “in a live experiment on the settlement and custody of an unlisted digital bond in the French market.”
In addition, the bank will integrate METACO’s “digital asset custody and orchestration platform into its existing infrastructure,” officials say. “The platform will underpin the bank’s institutional custody offering and unify management across the many systems, so that institutional customers can store, issue and settle digital securities alongside their traditional assets.”
“Our aim is to offer our clients a single view of all these different types of assets for complete transparency, greater operational efficiency and risk management,” Wayne Hughes, head of digital assets at BNP Paribas Securities Services, said in a statement.
BNP Paribas Securities Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BNP Paribas Group, provides multi-asset post-trade and buy-side and sell-side servicing solutions to market participants, corporates and issuers, officials said.
CFTC approves AEGIS SEF
A new swap execution facility (SEF) is on the market as Aegis SEF, LLC, has been granted registration as an SEF by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The regulator has issued an order of registration for AEGIS SEF, which is a Delaware limited liability company headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas and an affiliate of AEGIS CTA, LLC, a commodity trading advisor, officials said.
“After reviewing AEGIS SEF’s application and related exhibits, the CFTC determined that AEGIS SEF demonstrated its ability to comply with the CEA provisions and CFTC regulations applicable to SEFs,” according to the CFTC’s announcement. “The terms and conditions of the order require, among other things, that the AEGIS SEF comply with all provisions of the CEA and the CFTC’s regulations applicable to SEFs.”
The approval for the AEGIS SEF means there will be 20 SEFs registered with the CFTC, officials note.
