INTL FCStone Ltd, the London-based European subsidiary of Fortune 500 company INTL FCStone Inc, is to deploy Eventus Systems’ Validus platform for market surveillance activities throughout the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. Building on last year’s adoption of the platform for futures market surveillance by the company’s US-based FCM subsidiary, the new agreement substantially expands the relationship not only geographically but also across multiple product types and asset classes, including futures, equities and fixed income.
The newly expanded implementation will be active within weeks, also leveraging the cloud-based version of Validus on a T+1 basis, replacing the current outsourced system used by the London subsidiary.
Alexander Culley, Chief Compliance Officer, EMEAA (Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia) for INTL FCStone Ltd, says: “Our colleagues in the US have been extremely pleased with the ability to customize alerts as well as the performance and flexibility of the Validus platform – not only as it relates to US trading venues but also in the European markets traded by US clients. That was important for us, as the markets here that are a major portion of our business have their own unique character and culture. For instance, the fact that Validus works well with the unusual date structure of the London Metal Exchange (LME) was a big selling point for us. We only began discussions in the past seven to nine weeks but are already planning to go live in July so implementation has been very quick out of the blocks. Eventus has worked closely with us to reduce our costs and offer us much more flexibility while ensuring a more robust capability on each of the many markets in which we operate.”
Eventus CEO Travis Schwab says: “It’s particularly gratifying that INTL FCStone has chosen to expand significantly on our relationship after seeing the benefits of Validus first-hand over the course of the past year. This is a proven platform within the organisation in reducing false positive alerts, enabling compliance staff to make better use of their time and achieving tangible cost efficiencies. We’ve worked diligently to ensure we cover the markets European firms need, as well as successfully address the unique regulatory requirements and exchange rules in the region.”
Eventus this year established a presence in Europe with staff in London to support clients locally and grow its business in the region. The firm is now actively surveilling activity for clients on more than 100 exchanges and trading venues around the world, regularly adding additional market centres upon client requests.
Validus is the first platform to apply machine learning in concert with a procedural approach to cut down on false positive alerts while ensuring firms have the necessary data to respond quickly and comprehensively to regulatory inquiries.
