NICE Actimize, provider of a single financial crime, risk and compliance software platform for the financial services industry, has launched a comprehensive hedge fund trading compliance solution designed to monitor the activities of hedge funds across all cash market and derivative asset classes (exchange-traded and OTC).
NICE Actimize provides multiple deployment options, including on-premise, as well as hosting in a secure data center as an alternative delivery mechanism to help firms reduce the cost of operating and maintaining software in-house and acquiring market data.
The Actimize Hedge Fund Trading Compliance solution, based on a variation of existing market-proven NICE Actimize technology and representing many years of implementation experience, includes a broad range of analytical models designed to detect illicit or non-compliant behaviour by combining proven, out-of-the-box detection and investigation capabilities to ensure timely identification of potential compliance issues, such as insider trading, market manipulation, securities fraud, and deceptive practices. With comprehensive audit, query and reporting tools, the NICE Actimize solution provides end-to-end compliance risk management that specifically meets the needs of hedge funds’ complex trading environments and a demonstrable system of surveillance for regulators.
"With the changes imposed by Dodd-Frank legislation, hedge funds must adopt more effective controls to ensure regulatory compliance and better equip themselves to address future regulations," says Amir Orad (pictured), President and CEO, NICE Actimize.
Orad continued, "To accomplish this, hedge funds must effectively partner with a solutions provider whose approach supports a comprehensive compliance risk management strategy that provides quick assessment of company policies and procedures to combat improper and/or unauthorised dealings. We are already seeing positive response for our specific approach to market needs, due to our combined expertise in addressing customer needs in regulatory compliance and technology innovation."
According to Miranda Mizen, Director, Equities Research for the TABB Group, a strategic advisory and research firm focused on capital markets: "Regulatory compliance and risk management are top of mind for US hedge funds at the moment, and both regulators and investors are asking for much more information. As a heterogeneous group, hedge funds need quality products and custom solutions that fit the size and nature of their individual businesses to ensure they can balance regulatory compliance with the cost of doing business."
Leveraging sophisticated analytics, along with configurable thresholds and scoring factors across all derivative asset classes, the Actimize Hedge Fund solution enables efficient use of resources by ensuring a manageable volume of alerts.. Detection scenarios cover a number of issues including: market price manipulation, wash transactions/painting the tape, parking/window dressing, trading ahead of market events (insider dealing), and short selling in connection with public offerings.
