IPC Launches Financial Markets Cloud Service for Trading ETFs

NEW YORK – June 29, 2016 – IPC Systems, Inc., a leading global provider of specialized communications and managed network-as-a-service (MNaaS) solutions for the financial trading community, today announced the launch of a Financial Markets Cloud service for securely and reliably trading exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The groundbreaking solution introduced today enables sell-side firms as well as IPC’s diverse community of over 4,000 buy-side firms comprised of institutional investors, insurance companies, corporate treasuries, asset managers and hedge funds to trade ETFs electronically or via voice.

“ETFs provide transparency, standardization and tight bid-ask spreads in addition to offering market makers an efficient way to manage and transfer risk,” said Anthony Perrotta, Partner and Global Head of Research and Consulting at TABB Group, a leading financial markets research and strategic advisory firm. “Electronic and voice connectivity to an established ecosystem of counterparties and liquidity venues is crucial for fixed income ETFs since they trade simultaneously both over-the-counter and on exchanges.”

Perrotta continued, “As ETFs continue to proliferate and fixed income market participants increasingly utilize the products to both manage beta and generate alpha, we foresee an increased demand for specialized communications and managed network services which will ensure optimum flow of information and data.”

 “The combination of ETFs and our Financial Markets Cloud offers a powerful and transformational paradigm for the rapidly evolving global fixed income markets where sourcing liquidity, mitigating risk, connecting market participants and enabling all-to-all trading have become imperative,” said Joseph Pickel, Global Head of Sales and Marketing, Financial Markets Network, IPC. “Today’s announcement underscores our unwavering commitment to providing market participants with next generation solutions to reliably and securely trade ETFs in listed and over-the-counter markets around the world.”

The IPC Financial Markets Network service portfolio includes the Connexus Financial Extranet, Direct Connect and MPLS WAN data services, as well as Trader and Enhanced Voice connectivity services. IPC’s Financial Markets Network interconnects global financial centers and allows access to more than 6,000 market participant locations across 700 cities in more than 60 countries.

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About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader that powers financial markets globally. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With customers first and always, we collaborate with each to understand their individual needs to help make them secure, productive and compliant within our connected community. Through service excellence, long-developed expertise and a focus on innovation and community, we provide agile and efficient ways for our customers to accelerate their ability to adapt to the ever–changing requirements for advanced data networks, compliance and collaboration with all counter-parties across the financial markets. www.ipc.com

 

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or similar terminology. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

IPC Survey Reveals Key Areas of Focus of Compliance Executives at Financial Services Firms

68% of financial services companies have increased investment in risk and compliance

NEW YORK, June 28, 2016 – Understanding new regulations and rules, managing operations in light of new regulations and anti-money laundering are among the top three important issues for chief compliance officers and executives at financial services companies. These results were part of a new IPC Compliance Survey of 2016 FINRA annual conference attendees conducted by IPC Systems, a leading global provider of risk and compliance solutions for the financial services community.

As compared to previous years 68 percent of financial services firm executives have increased their investment in risk and compliance, according to the IPC Compliance Survey.  Specific to technology-related communications issues, keeping pace with technology changes is the most important consideration (45 percent), followed by communications archival (26 percent) and data management (21 percent).  Approximately one-third of respondents cited cybercrime and one-third cited employee conduct among the most important issues for their company, while avoiding large fines was a concern for fewer than 10 percent of those surveyed.  Other important issues cited by respondents include managing reputational risk (29 percent), and fraud detection and prevention (27 percent).

“Our Compliance survey reaffirms that, as global financial compliance requirements continue to evolve, it is a significant challenge to understand policy and manage the data tied to communications, interactions and transactions to ensure it is securely captured, archived, and analyzed,” said Lionel Grosclaude, Senior Vice President, Risk and Compliance of IPC. “Financial services companies need expertise, guidance and technology solutions that holistically addresses their information governance challenges.”

 The IPC Compliance Survey was conducted in-person at the 2016 FINRA Annual Conference on May 23-24, 2016, in Washington DC. In total, 171 conference attendees were interviewed. For more information on our survey results visit https://www.ipc.com/ipc-insights/infographics/ipc-survey-reveals-biggest-compliance-challenges-facing-financial-markets or download the full survey https://www.ipc.com/ipc-insights/e-books/ipc-compliance-survey-report-2016

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader that powers financial markets globally. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With customers first and always, we collaborate with each to understand their individual needs to help make them secure, productive and compliant within our connected community. Through service excellence, long-developed expertise and a focus on innovation and community, we provide agile and efficient ways for our customers to accelerate their ability to adapt to the ever–changing requirements for advanced data networks, compliance and collaboration with all counter-parties across the financial markets. www.ipc.com

 

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or similar terminology. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

IPC Systems Launches Connexus® Cloud, a Secure Communications and Data Collaboration Platform Purpose-Built to Empower Financial Markets Innovators

Algomi among inaugural Connexus Cloud Partner collaborators; more than 6,000 customer locations, 700 cities and 200,000 users connected across cloud network

 

NEW YORK – June 22, 2016 – In a move that marks a milestone in the evolution of its market strategy, IPC Systems, Inc., a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and networking solutions for the financial markets community, today announced its launch of Connexus Cloud.  This innovation progresses one of the industry’s largest secure encrypted communications platforms connecting IPC’s community of 200,000 users across 6,000 market participant locations in 700 cities.

“Connexus Cloud is the foundation of IPC’s strategy to move the financial markets into a new era with an intuitive, robust and all-encompassing cloud delivery model.  Its secure, compliant high performance design is purpose-built to be a new standard.  We are continually expanding our collaborative ecosystem of data and voice resources exclusively for the financial markets community,” said Neil Barua, CEO of IPC.

Algomi, the network providing information-matching solutions for the optimization of fixed income liquidity, is one of IPC’s first Connexus Cloud partners. Furthermore, Algomi’s DealCall, on the award-winning Honeycomb platform, is designed to enable IPC’s Connexus Cloud users to swiftly and securely connect to their dealers.

“Financial institutions continue to migrate from on-premise solutions to embrace cloud-based models for infrastructure flexibility. The on-demand access Connexus Cloud provides to our expanding portfolio of IPC and IPC-certified partner products, services and solutions, will foster a growing, dynamic community and the next wave of industry advancements,” Barua added.

IPC’s Connexus Cloud will deliver an enhanced lineup of IPC products including  communications-as-a-service and information management for compliance solutions through an on-demand and anywhere user interaction model.  The Connexus Cloud Partner program will offer innovative applications to the financial markets community allowing members to interact securely, exchange information and mitigate risk.  IPC plans to announce a number of additional Connexus Cloud partners and products in 2016.


About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader that powers financial markets globally. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With customers first and always, we collaborate with each to understand their individual needs to help make them secure, productive and compliant within our connected community. Through service excellence, long-developed expertise and a focus on innovation and community, we provide agile and efficient ways for our customers to accelerate their ability to adapt to the ever–changing requirements for advanced data networks, compliance and collaboration with all counter-parties across the financial markets. www.ipc.com

 

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or similar terminology. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

 

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Strategic Partner Profile – Thomson Reuters

IPC® is one of the primary managed extranet providers in the Americas for the Thomson Reuters Delivery Direct Platform and has been designated by Thomson Reuters as an approved global solution provider for fulfilling and managing connectivity for the Thomson Reuters Financial Community Network (FCN).

THOMSON REUTERS FINANCIAL COMMUNITY NETWORK

Thomson Reuters is a leading source of intelligent information for the world’s businesses and professionals, providing customers with a competitive advantage.

The Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk business unit provides critical news, information, analytics and transaction capabilities for trading, investing, financial and corporate professionals, and also offers leading regulatory and operational risk management solutions. Financial & Risk’s products and services help customers discover profi table insights and opportunities, access liquidity, drive efficiencies in business and operations, anticipate risk and ensure compliance.

In support of the Financial & Risk business unit, Thomson Reuters has established the Financial Community Network.

The Financial Community Network is a Thomson Reuters application delivery program enabling customers to access strategic Thomson Reuters’ products and services. The Financial Community Network connectivity solution is targeted at market participants that consume Thomson Reuters Products and Services over a Thomson Reuters approved financial extranet service such as IPC’s Connexus™. IPC’s Connexus solution supports the Thomson Reuters’ FCN application delivery program providing an industry leading global, private, and secure cloud based MPLS ecosystem and marketplace trusted by the Capital Markets.

Market participants around the globe can now partner directly with IPC through the FCN program to access strategic Thomson Reuters products and services.

IPC FINANCIAL MARKETS NETWORK: SECURELY DELIVERING THOMSON REUTERS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES TO THE GLOBAL CAPITAL MARKETS COMMUNITY

IPC operates the Financial Markets Network (FMN), a managed network-as-a-service (MNaaS) solution that offers a ready-made ecosystem of buy-side firms, sell-side firms, interdealer brokers, liquidity venues, energy firms, trade lifecycle services, market data providers and clearing/settlement fi rms.

The FMN provides thousands of sub-ecosystems throughout the trade lifecycle and across asset classes – equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, and their derivatives – futures, options, forwards and swaps.

 

 

IPC’s worldwide Financial Markets Network interconnects global financial centers and 6,000 financial market participants in over 600 cities in more than 60 countries with connectivity in support of all aspects of the trade lifecycle – order creation, order placement, trade execution, clearing, settlement, reporting and market data delivery.

PERFORMANCE-ENGINEERED TO MEET THE EXACTING DEMANDS OF THE FINANCIAL MARKETS

IPC’s Connexus Financial Extranet enables the global community of capital market participants to access Thomson Reuters products and services. Through a single connection, capital market participants can link to one another and seamlessly receive and distribute market data and applications in a secure trading ecosystem. Built on an IP/MPLS backbone, the highly scalable, reliable and secure Connexus Financial Extranet supports a number of industry standard protocols including TCP, IP, UDP, multicast, FIX and SWIFT. The network is engineered to be fully resilient.

Connexus Difference

• Exclusive focus on the capital markets

• Extensive experience in delivering flexible, reliable and high performance network services

• A trading ecosystem comprised of established market participants

• “Follow-the-sun” 24x7x365 world class customer service

• 100% uptime SLAs

• Expedited delivery in 3 business days for on-net to on-net situations

• Carrier agnostic network with 100+ POPs in over 60 countries

• Delivery via a managed network-as-a-service solution instead of the Internet ensures unmatched management capabilities, operational intelligence and network security while meeting regulatory compliance standards

• Connectivity throughout the trade lifecycle

• Coverage across multiple asset classes equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, futures, options, swaps, forwards

• A cost-efficient managed network

For details of Thomson Reuters products and services available via Connexus, please contact your regional representative at IPCFCNRequest@ipc.com

About Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. Thomson Reuters combines industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, intellectual property and science and media markets, powered by the world’s most trusted news organization.

For more information, go to www.thomsonreuters.com

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader that powers financial markets globally.

We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With customers first and always, we collaborate

with each to understand their individual needs to help make them secure, productive and compliant within our

connected community. Through service excellence, long-developed expertise and a focus on innovation and community, we provide agile and effi cient ways for our customers to accelerate their ability to adapt to the ever–changing requirements for advanced data networks, compliance and collaboration with all counter-parties across the financial markets.

MiFID II: Five considerations financial organisations shouldn’t ignore

Article published in FX-MM, June 2016.

Robert Powell, Global Head of Compliance at IPC Systems, explains why trading firms need to start preparing now for the fundamental changes to required record keeping contained in MiFID II despite the recently announced delay in its implementation.

 

 

Last year, the European Markets Authority (ESMA) provided its final view of the technical standards implied under MiFID II, which will alter the functionality of European financial markets by increasing their transparency, safety and resilience, as well as providing enhanced investor protection. Despite the European Council recently confirming a year’s delay, financial organisations would be wise to start preparing for this increased regulatory scrutiny.

In particular, the records-keeping section of the advice will instigate a great deal of change in the way that communication records are maintained in Europe. The big question is, how will this impact organisations’ trading communications in the future? Here are the five principle ways MiFID II regulations will impact financial organisations, once they’re enacted in 2018.

  1. Longer retention periods will be required
    In the UK, the current recording retention rules are driven by the Conduct of Business Sourcebook (COBS §11.8.5), last amended in November 2014 to remove an exemption on mobile recording. These rules require only 180 days of call and communications data to be kept. Many regulated UK firms already go beyond this, retaining five or seven years of records, as a best practice measure or to comply with Tax Authority rules. Under MiFID II there will be a mandatory increase to five years for all regulated firms not already doing so.
  2. A wider scope of communications recordings is specified
    MiFID II will require all “communications that are intended to lead to a transaction” to be recorded, rather than the previous, narrower mandate of “client orders and transactions.” This will drastically increase the scope of communications that are required to be retained. Further, the change in scope includes personnel who will now need to be recorded. Firms currently only record employees that ‘commit’ transactions and will need to begin to record all ‘regulated’ users. The addition of a Pan-European requirement to archive mobile and fixed telephone calls, represents a notable addition to the categories of media retained in those jurisdictions. Currently, only a few countries, including the United Kingdom and Norway, require mobile phones to be recorded. The old banking policy directing employees not to use their mobile phones for “client orders and transactions” will be ineffective, nor will it be broad enough in scope to satisfy the new regulatory framework. In many European countries, this means that solutions will need to be deployed to allow for the recording of mobile calls.

IPC Launches Industry Leading Fixed Income Marketplace

Pioneering solution to enable liquidity sourcing, link market participants and facilitate secure, compliant all-to-all trading. 

New York, NY – June 8, 2016 – IPC Systems, Inc., a leading global provider of specialized communications and managed network-as-a-service solutions for the financial trading community, today announced that it has launched Fixed Income Marketplace, a premier holistic connectivity solution for market participants to trade fixed income instruments electronically or via voice. The announcement was made at the Fixed Income Leaders Summit in Boston, an annual gathering of senior fixed income traders and portfolio managers.

As the financial industry continues to see changes in market structure, regulatory impact on bank balance sheets, liquidity shifts to the buy-side, and fragmentation of trading venues and protocols, there is an emerging and pressing need for secure and reliable connectivity to source liquidity, link market participants and enable all-to-all trading for the fixed income asset class.

“A push towards greater transparency, stricter risk management practices and a stronger regulatory regime have dramatically altered the landscape of the global fixed income markets,” said Anthony Perrotta, Partner and Global Head of Research and Consulting at Tabb Group, a leading financial markets research and strategic advisory firm. “We are witnessing an unprecedented need for specialized technology and managed network services as market participants now require increased connectivity to diverse counterparties in order to drive the search for assets and conduct transactions.”

Perrotta continued “Profitably trading fixed income is governed by connectivity throughout the trade lifecycle and access to a ready-made ecosystem of market participants. This applies not only to trading government bonds, corporate bonds, interest rate swaps and credit default swaps but also for executing various fixed income arbitrage strategies. Arbitraging the yield curve, mortgage-backed securities, volatility, swap spreads, capital structure and convertibles all depend on being able to access counterparties on demand.”

“The shifting of fixed income liquidity to the buy-side has generated substantial demand for all-to-all trading,” said Joseph Pickel, Global Head of Sales and Marketing, Financial Markets Network, IPC. “The IPC Fixed Income Marketplace consisting of diverse buy-side firms are leveraging voice, RFQ, CLOB and dark pools to connect to their counterparties and source liquidity.”

Pickel continued “Fixed income markets are a vital source of financing and are consequently critical for economic growth. Today’s announcement emphasizes IPC’s steadfast commitment to enabling market participants trade, hedge and arbitrage successfully in the global secondary debt markets with innovative solutions.”

The IPC Financial Markets Network service portfolio includes the Connexus Financial Extranet, Direct Connect and MPLS WAN data services, as well as Trader and Enhanced Voice connectivity services. IPC’s Financial Markets Network interconnects global financial centers and allows access to more than 6,000 market participant locations across 700 cities in more than 60 countries.

 

 

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader that powers financial markets globally. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With customers first and always, we collaborate with each to understand their individual needs to help make them secure, productive and compliant within our connected community. Through service excellence, long-developed expertise and a focus on innovation and community, we provide agile and efficient ways for our customers to accelerate their ability to adapt to the ever–changing requirements for advanced data networks, compliance and collaboration with all counter-parties across the financial markets. www.ipc.com

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or similar terminology. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

IPC’s new FX Hub benefits customers

Article published in e-Forex, July 2016. 

IPC recently launched its FX Hub, a low latency, co-located performance solution engineered to address the industry’s most complex trading challenges.

The FX Hub is centered at the heart of the global foreign exchange markets, specifically Equinix’s International Business Exchange™ data centers in New York, London, Tokyo and Singapore as well as other major FX centers such as Moscow, Chicago, Frankfurt and Zurich. The hub empowers customers to connect quicker, reduce costs and trade more profitably.

With the FX Hub, customers have access to IPC’s vast community of financial market participants and are positioned locally with low latency access via IPC’s dark fiber rings to key FX liquidity providers and dealers.

“Successful trading in the foreign exchange markets is challenging given the complicated market structure,” said Larry Tabb, CEO of Tabb Group, a leading financial markets research and strategic advisory firm. “There are a vast number of instruments such as currency swaps, forwards, options, indices, outrights, non-deliverable forwards and structured products along with many exotic currency pairs that are being traded by market participants. FX is not just about spot transactions or trading only G4 currencies.”

Tabb continued “We see non-dealer financial institutions, insurance companies, corporate treasuries and brokers increasingly deploying performance-engineered managed hosting, connectivity and colocation services to benefit from economies of scale, access a range of liquidity venues, achieve best execution and participate cost-effectively in the global FX markets.”

The increased need for reliable connectivity to source liquidity, mitigate risk and harvest alpha in the FX markets is largely due to growth in non-dealer financial institution participation, the increased use of execution algorithms and the lack of a central marketplace. Given these market dynamics, IPC’s FX Hub offers investors:

  • Easier and faster connectivity to brokers/dealers, investment banks, prime brokers, and liquidity providers to trade effectively, achieve best execution, discover prices and minimize market impact.
  • Efficient access to market data and trade lifecycle services such as order management and execution management systems as well as data and transaction cost analysis services.
  • Improved collaboration among traders, portfolio managers and risk managers to execute investment strategies and manage risk.
  • Access to a full community of services and simplified management.
  • Comprehensive and affordable business continuity management, disaster recovery planning solutions to ensure 24/7 access to the FX markets that is underpinned by an industry leading global provider with exclusive focus on financial markets.

When using FX Hub, IPC provides customers an aggregated handoff that offers connectivity to multiple venues. IPC is responsible for local cross connects within the co-location facility along with coordination and integration into local FX venues and banks. IPC offers flexibility and connectivity options for various customer scenarios.

  • Existing Equinix Co-located Customer: For customers who are currently co-located at Equinix’s New York, London and Tokyo data centers, IPC will provide a cross connect back to our FX Hub infrastructure.
  • Co-located IPC Hosting Rack Customer: For customers who want to co-locate their servers, IPC offers a dedicated hosting rack for customer equipment with a cross connect to our FX Hub infrastructure.
  • Existing IPC Financial Market Network Customer: For existing IPC Financial Market Network customers, IPC offers connectivity into FX Hub via their existing IPC connectivity.

“The growing participation of pension funds, insurance companies, regional banks, hedge funds and proprietary trading firms in FX has led to more heterogeneity in the markets,” said David Brown, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Financial Markets Network, IPC. “Consequently, reliable, secure and operationally resilient managed network services as well as access to an ecosystem of diverse counterparties have now become the backbone for successful FX trading. Our FX Hub underscores IPC’s wholehearted commitment to serving all participants in the global FX markets, the world’s largest and most liquid asset class, with cutting-edge solutions.”

 

IPC Thought Leader to Present at the Fixed Income Leaders Summit

NEW YORK – June 1, 2016 – IPC Systems, Inc., is proud to announce that one of the company’s thought leaders, Ganesh Iyer, IPC’s Global Director of Product Marketing, will be presenting to senior fixed income traders and portfolio managers from leading buy-side institutions at the Fixed Income Leaders Summit in Boston, MA scheduled to be held on June 8 and 9, 2016 at the Westin Copley Place. The event will focus on critical concerns faced by fixed income professionals such as the evolving regulatory environment and market structure, liquidity shifting to the buy-side and technological innovation. During his presentation titled “Connecting Market Participants in the Evolving Landscape of Capital, Liquidity and Leverage Requirements”, Mr. Iyer will be focusing on the benefits of having available a large and diverse financial ecosystem to assist with executing a range of fixed income trading strategies. Mr. Iyer holds the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designation and has been a speaker and panelist at prestigious industry events around the world.

 

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader that powers financial markets globally. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With customers first and always, we collaborate with each to understand their individual needs to help make them secure, productive and compliant within our connected community. Through service excellence, long-developed expertise and a focus on innovation and community, we provide agile and efficient ways for our customers to accelerate their ability to adapt to the ever–changing requirements for advanced data networks, compliance and collaboration with all counter-parties across the financial markets. www.ipc.com

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or similar terminology. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. 

IPC Systems Now Providing Connectivity to Hotspot

Customers Can Now Leverage IPC for Secure, Reliable Connectivity to Leading Institutional FX Market

 

NEW YORK and LONDON – May 24, 2016 – Hotspot, a leading institutional foreign exchange (FX) market owned and operated by Bats Global Markets, and IPC Systems, Inc., a leading global provider of specialized communications and managed network-as-a-service solutions for the financial trading community, today announced that IPC is now a connectivity provider to Hotspot, enabling IPC’s diverse ecosystem of buy-side and sell-side clients to gain access to the Hotspot market.

Hotspot brings the powerful benefits of an independent, transparent ECN marketplace structure to institutional foreign exchange trading. Hotspot’s ECN model provides increased market transparency and greater control of the trading process, enabling better trade execution and lower transaction costs.

“We’re pleased to partner with industry providers like IPC to allow our members maximum flexibility and connectivity efficiencies in accessing our market,” said Bill Goodbody, Jr., Senior Vice President and Head of FX at Bats. “We strive to provide our customers with connectivity choice and we are pleased to have IPC on board as a partner, providing more customers access to the strong liquidity on Hotspot.”

“Connectivity is a critical element for institutional FX investors to source liquidity, trade effectively, achieve best execution, and mitigate risk,” said David Brown, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Financial Markets Network, IPC. “We welcome Hotspot to our global FX Hub and are thrilled to connect FX market participants to them through our reliable and secure financial markets private cloud.”

The IPC Financial Markets Network service portfolio includes the Connexus Financial Extranet, Direct Connect and MPLS WAN data services, as well as Trader and Enhanced Voice connectivity services. IPC’s Financial Markets Network interconnects global financial centers and allows access to more than 6,000 market participant locations across 700 cities in more than 60 countries.

Hotspot’s average daily volume (ADV) in April 2016 was $25.6 billion and total trading volume was $537.4 billion. The company’s diverse customer base is comprised of more than 220 clients including banks, market makers, hedge funds and various institutions.  Additional information is available at hotspotfx.com.

 

About Bats Global Markets

Bats Global Markets, Inc., is a leading operator of exchanges and services for financial markets around the world with a stated mission of Making Markets Better. Bats operates the largest equities exchange in Europe and the continent’s largest trade reporting facility. In the U.S., Bats operates four stock exchanges, which taken together constitute the largest market for ETF trading and the second-largest equities market in the country. Bats also operates two U.S. options markets. Bats owns Hotspot, a leading institutional spot foreign exchange market, and ETF.com, a leading provider of ETF news, data and analysis. The company is headquartered in Kansas City with offices in New York, London, Chicago and Singapore.  Visit bats.com and @BatsGlobal for more information.

 

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader that powers financial markets globally. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With customers first and always, we collaborate with each to understand their individual needs to help make them secure, productive and compliant within our connected community. Through service excellence, long-developed expertise and a focus on innovation and community, we provide agile and efficient ways for our customers to accelerate their ability to adapt to the ever–changing requirements for advanced data networks, compliance and collaboration with all counter-parties across the financial markets. www.ipc.com

IPC Significantly Expands Portfolio of Comprehensive Compliance Solutions for Financial Industry

 

IPC’s integrated intelligent technologies ensure unified compliant communications, records management and data delivery for financial institutions

 

NEW YORK – May 23, 2016 – IPC Systems, Inc. (IPC), a leading provider of global communications solutions and software for the financial services community, unveiled a significantly expanded portfolio of comprehensive compliance solutions under its growing Risk and Compliance Services division at the 2016 Annual FINRA Conference in Washington D.C. today. The announcement marks IPC’s continued strategic focus as a risk and compliance unified communications service provider for financial institutions, and underscores its heightened concentration on the rapidly developing, critically important area concerning increasingly stringent and complex global financial markets compliance requirements.

“IPC’s deep expertise and global presence uniquely position us to guide our customers through the dynamic regulatory landscape which has never been more important, particularly in the wake of proposed and expected MiFID II, Dodd Frank and Market Abuse Regulation requirements,” said Neil Barua, CEO of IPC.  “Our specialized, innovative solutions not only allow customers to mitigate compliance risks, but also enhance their trading operations.”

The main challenge financial market firms face in relation to complying with increased regulations is effectively managing vast amounts of data related to interactions among clients, counterparties and internal teams across many platforms. Firms are required to store, analyze and index all aspects of a transaction for immediate retrieval and analysis in response to regulators’ inquiries. They need to be able to show that they are able to actively monitor their systems in real-time to make certain that interactions comply with applicable laws.

To ensure customers receive the right solution for their needs, IPC offers a consultative approach supported by a robust compliance product portfolio.

“With compliance conduct and culture at the heart of corporate board strategies, risk and governance are now regarded by our clients as business priorities. IPC integrates compliance, risk and governance, managing vital data at every stage of the process,” said Lionel Grosclaude, IPC senior vice president, Risk and Compliance and Managing Director, EMEA. “Whether a simple system or the most complex end-to-end validated and compliance assured solution, IPC ensures data is captured, records are properly managed and accurately delivered to risk and compliance officers when needed.”

Grosclaude leads the expanded IPC Risk and Compliance Services division, which is comprised of seasoned professionals from across the compliance spectrum who work with external regulators and senior-level financial and technology executives to understand the changes in the global regulatory environment. The team provides products and consultative services that deliver bespoke solutions designed to meet each individual client’s current and future needs.

IPC’s expanded compliance product portfolio features integrated, intelligent technologies that provide companies with the ability to meet many communications-related compliance requirements and store the data required to be captured, stored and retrieved (as necessary) including:

  • Call recording; Mobile and Unified Communications Recording
  • Communications Surveillance
  • Compliance Assurance Services

Grosclaude added: “Our team constantly monitors new and proposed rules so we can understand the intention of the changes and enhance current and future products and solutions to meet these evolving needs. We achieve this by working with industry vendors, global regulators and industry experts to ensure that we can deliver what our clients expect: unified compliant communications record management, proactive compliance assurance, agility and flexibility for future needs as well as piece of mind when they want to run their day-to-day business.”

 

About IPC

IPC is a technology and service leader that powers financial markets globally. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With customers first and always, we collaborate with each to understand their individual needs to help make them secure, productive and compliant within our connected community. Through service excellence, long-developed expertise and a focus on innovation and community, we provide agile and efficient ways for our customers to accelerate their ability to adapt to the ever–changing requirements for advanced data networks, compliance and collaboration with all counter-parties across the financial markets. www.ipc.com

Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or similar terminology. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.