First Derivatives (AIM: FDP.L, ESM:FDP.I), a leading provider of software and consulting services to global investment banks, brokers, hedge funds and exchanges, today announces the successful implementation of its market surveillance system at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
The custom-built system, based on First Derivatives’ Delta Stream™ technology, leverages its existing high performance algorithmic trading infrastructure that will allow ASIC to conduct multi-market supervision across futures and equities in real time, providing the regulator with new capabilities in identifying fraud across and between different markets.
The speed of the system also provides ASIC additional flexibility in its analysis, with the time taken to produce some reports reduced from several hours to less than one minute.
First Derivatives’ Director APAC, Rob Hodgkinson, said the implementation of the system had run on time and to budget since being announced in December 2012.
“We’re very pleased with the way the project has run. ASIC now has the tools needed to monitor the market in a very sophisticated way,” he said. “Globally, regulators face issues in being able to keep up with the speed and sophistication of their own markets, which is obviously a huge problem if you’re trying to police the market effectively. The system designed for ASIC puts it at the head of the pack in terms of their capabilities as an effective, evidence-based regulator.”
ASIC’s Senior Executive Leader of Market and Participant Supervision, Greg Yanco, said ASIC’s decision to implement the new system had yielded very positive results.
“We made the decision to upgrade our systems in response to new developments in the trading environment,” he said. “Given the dynamism of the market environment, we wanted a system capable of capturing and analysing data from all our participants on all markets in real time. With this implementation we can identify questionable activity straight away and act upon it much quicker.”
