Symphony blog

As the landscape of communication continues to evolve in our increasingly digital world, the financial services industry is feeling the pinch of regulatory scrutiny. In recent years, financial firms have faced nearly $2 billion in penalties from the SEC and CFTC due to unregulated “off-channel” messaging. This surge in “off-channel” communication, including usage of platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat, SMS, LINE, and mobile calls, is largely fueled by the rise of hybrid work. Yet, regulators maintain that all business communications must be monitored, auditable, and occur only within official channels. In the words of SEC Chair Gary Gensler, “As technology changes, it’s even more important that registrants appropriately conduct their communications about business matters within only official channels. And they must maintain and preserve those communications.”

Recently the EU signed the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) regulation. This legislation opens the door to competitors that may not have an economies of scale advantage, but may be able to utilize a low-carbon advantage to become more competitive. Our NLP highlights which major companies in the Materials and Industrials sector are set up to compete in the EU’s new low carbon environment.

We live in a fast-evolving age of information, where Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are starting to be used in many areas like financial decision-making and

Alt data firms started to emerge about a decade ago, and the sector has since progressed through several phases. But everything changed in a flash with the emergence of large language models (LLM) and ChatGPT. This moment can be viewed as an exponential leap in the evolution of alt data. Furthermore, when viewed through the lens of finance, this inflection point requires making several distinctions before attempting to apply the LLM phase of alt data.

Almost a decade ago, Europe led the way in shortening the settlement cycle to T+2 – a task that required wholesale re-engineering of European market-structure. Mere months from now, European securities firms will again be challenged – this time with the move to US NEXT-DAY settlement. Once more, our market participants face a complete restructuring of entire organisational workflows.

Our analysis of Q1 earnings calls within Symphony’s ESG platform highlights a flurry of development in renewables, especially in offshore wind, with “industrials” and “utilities” driving the topic count in management commentary.

Started in 2014 as a messaging platform to enable data security and compliance, today Symphony is a leading common connector for market workflows. Among other things, Symphony provides more than half a million users with secure tele-conferencing services. At the core of these services lies a piece of software tech known as Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU). We call it Symphony Media Bridge (SMB).

The SEC has adopted a final rule to shorten the standard settlement cycle for most securities transactions from two business days (T+2) to one business day following the trade date (T+1). The reduced settlement period is forcing companies to reexamine their post-trade processes and procedures, which include communication methods. This article discusses several operating model changes to help with the transition to T+1 ahead of the compliance deadline of May 28, 2024.