b-next, a specialist provider of capital markets compliance solutions today launched the CMC:Benchmark Fixing Analysis solution, to identify suspicious trading activity at the time of the foreign exchange fix.
The FX industry is under increasing scrutiny following allegations that traders have colluded to manipulate the foreign exchange fix, putting compliance officers under greater pressure to implement systematic surveillance across the FX market. Most of the world’s top tier banks have come under investigation, leading to one of the biggest inquiries the financial industry has faced in recent years.
With b-next’s expertise in market surveillance solutions, partnered with Thomson Reuters data, customers will benefit from faster analysis of trading data and shorter implementation times. CMC:Benchmark Fixing Analysis offers numerous automated detection scenarios that identify suspicious trading activity at or around the time of the fix. It can be enabled for any currency pair for FX Swap and Non-Deliverable Forward (NDF). The solution provides alert analysis including market data, covering global trading activity. The global control room function will aggregate and analyse data from across all time zones, allowing for cross-linking between all parts of a global institution.
Martin Porter, Business Development Director, b-next, comments: “The CMC:Benchmark Fixing Analysis responds to one of the biggest FX investigations into the financial industry since LIBOR, with 15 authorities across four continents being involved. As some benchmark fixings are based on verbal or system submissions, there’s a need for participants to implement monitoring solutions which handle OTC traded instruments and to adapt surveillance rules to regulatory recommendations. The combination of b-next software and Thomson Reuters data will enable firms to implement a more systematic approach to benchmark analysis.”
CMC:Benchmark Fixing Analysis has been developed based on the requirements of leading trading institutions to monitor the FX market. The tool is already available to existing or new b-next clients on either a hosted basis or as an in-house deployment. Additional benchmarks such as interest rate products (e.g. LIBOR) will also be made available within the same tool.