Barclays has appointed Greg Dalle as Managing Director and Co-Head of its EMEA Industrials Group, the bank announced. He will be based in London and is set to start in September, co-leading the group alongside Richard Probert. Dalle brings more than 25 years of investment banking experience to the role. He joins from Citigroup, where he served as Co-Head of EMEA Industrials, advising clients across Diversified Industrials and Industrials Technology. During his time there, he accumulated significant expertise in M&A, ECM and financing, working across corporate large caps and some of the largest transactions in diversified industrials, with a particular focus on large cap and private equity firms. Before Citigroup, he held the position of Co-Head of EMEA Industrials at Credit Suisse. The appointment reinforces Barclays’ push to expand its industrials franchise across the EMEA region and strengthen its global momentum in a sector the bank has identified as a key strategic priority. Spyros Svoronos, Barclays Global Head of Industrials, welcomed the hire. “Industrials is one of our key focus areas and Greg’s experience as a trusted advisor will further boost our already strong EMEA franchise, expand on our significant momentum globally and unlock more opportunities for our clients,” he said. The move marks another senior hire for Barclays as the bank continues to build out its investment banking coverage capabilities across key sectors.The post Barclays Names Greg Dalle Co-Head of EMEA Industrials first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Clearstream has announced that securities issued through its tokenized issuance platform, D7 DLT, are now accepted as collateral within the Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS), marking a landmark step in the digital transformation of European capital markets. The development officially bridges the gap between digital securities and the core of European central bank money operations, unlocking new liquidity pathways for market participants. The European Central Bank’s (ECB) decision to accept DLT-native securities issued via Clearstream as eligible collateral in Eurosystem credit operations has been welcomed as a pivotal moment for the broader adoption of digital assets in institutional finance. Market participants can now incorporate digital assets into their collateral strategies through Clearstream’s digital securities infrastructure, giving them access to central bank liquidity in a way that was previously unavailable for DLT-issued instruments. Clearstream holds a unique position in this space as the only triparty agent currently connected to ECMS. This gives the firm a streamlined route to help clients mobilize eligible assets for Eurosystem collateral operations, reinforcing its standing as a critical infrastructure bridge between digital issuance and traditional central bank liquidity frameworks. The announcement represents a significant vote of confidence from European regulators and central banking institutions in the maturity and reliability of DLT-based securities infrastructure. Industry observers are likely to view the move as a catalyst for wider institutional adoption of tokenized assets across European financial markets.The post Clearstream’s D7 DLT Securities Now Eligible as Eurosystem Collateral in Major Digital Asset Milestone first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Worldline has announced it is the first payment provider in Europe to enable Click to Pay for recurring payments, extending one-click checkout technology across the full subscription lifecycle for international merchants. The capability is available on Global Collect, Worldline’s cross-border payments platform, and is designed to help digital-first businesses scale subscription payments across global markets while tackling two of the most persistent revenue challenges in the sector: checkout friction and involuntary churn. According to Worldline, Click to Pay can increase checkout conversion by up to 6%, while involuntary churn, commonly triggered by expired or reissued cards, can account for as much as 40% of total subscription churn. The solution addresses both issues by securely storing tokenised payment credentials at the point of initial transaction and automatically updating them when cards are renewed or replaced, ensuring uninterrupted billing cycles. Gertjan Dewaele, Head of Product and Technology at Worldline’s Global Commerce division, said: “Being first in Europe to bring Click to Pay to recurring payments is a major step forward for subscription commerce. The result is simple: better conversion, lower churn, and stronger revenue protection at a global scale.” Built on EMVCo Secure Remote Commerce standards and supported by major card schemes, Click to Pay allows consumers to register once and check out instantly across merchants without passwords or manual entry. The solution is particularly relevant for SaaS, streaming, gaming, and digital membership businesses. Worldline’s Click to Pay for recurring payments will be available on the Global Collect platform from 30 July 2026.The post Worldline Becomes First European Provider to Bring Click to Pay to Recurring Payments first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Cboe Global Markets has launched Cboe Predicts, its prediction markets suite, starting with binary option contracts on the Mini-S&P 500 Index (XSP), listed as XSPBW and XSPBX. The contracts are live on Interactive Brokers, with Charles Schwab to follow in the coming months and further retail brokers after that. They trade on Cboe Options Exchange within the US-listed options framework and clear through the OCC; that regulated, intermediated structure is the distinction Cboe is leaning on against the crypto-native venues, entering a space pioneered by Kalshi and Polymarket. The launch is confined to financial benchmarks, not sports or politics. This is the framework Cboe unveiled in March going live; the first products are binary, with three-outcome XSP vertical spreads to come through its patent-pending Quoted Spread Book.The post In Brief: Cboe goes live in prediction markets with Mini-S&P 500 binary options first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

The FCA is consulting on a commitments package from 11 individual commodity futures day traders, after provisionally finding they may have restricted competition by sharing sensitive trading information or coordinating their strategies. The regulator has reached no view on whether competition law was breached; the traders have made no admission, and the deal would close the case without an infringement decision or a fine. The investigation, reference CA98/2023/01, centres on day traders active in global commodity futures markets. Day traders supply liquidity and absorb risk from other participants, so independent decision-making is what keeps these markets competitive; the FCA’s concern is that the 11 exchanged potentially sensitive information about their trading, coordinated their strategies, or both. The named parties are James Biagioni, George Commins, Paul Commins, Aristos Demetriou, Henry Lunn, Elliott Pickering, Christopher Roase, Nicholas Stewart, Paul Sutton, Matthew Thompson and Connor Younger. Rather than contest the case, the traders have offered commitments; to change how they handle sensitive information, to take annual competition law training, and to make a £1m ex gratia payment to the Crisis and Resilience Fund, which supports people in financial hardship. The FCA notes that the payment is likely to exceed any penalty it could impose, since financial penalties on individuals are capped by reference to turnover in the year before an infringement decision. The consultation runs until 14 July. If the FCA accepts the commitments, it will close the investigation without ruling on whether competition law was broken.The post FCA weighs commitments deal with 11 commodity futures traders over competition concerns first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

US authorities have charged a New Jersey man over a $2.7m insider trading scheme built on confidential deal information taken from his partner’s work laptop. The SEC filed civil charges on 23 June; the US Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey brought a parallel criminal indictment this week. According to the SEC’s complaint, filed in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey, Justin Jennings traded ahead of corporate announcements between February 2022 and October 2024 using information misappropriated from his then-romantic partner; she worked as an account executive at a strategic communications and investor relations firm entrusted with that information. Jennings is alleged to have used her work-issued laptop to access material non-public information on mergers and acquisitions, earnings, and other corporate events involving the firm’s public-company clients, without her authorisation. The SEC charged Jennings and Vortex Strategies LLC, a Wyoming entity he owned and controlled, with violating Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5; it is seeking permanent injunctions, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, and civil penalties. The Justice Department indictment charges Jennings, 27, of Rockaway Township, with one count of engaging in a securities fraud scheme, eight counts of securities fraud, and two counts of transacting in criminal proceeds; it puts the gains at roughly $2.7m across well-timed trades in eight listed companies, much of it ahead of M&A announcements, with access gained to draft press releases on the partner’s employer-issued laptop. The FBI’s Newark field office ran the investigation; the SEC’s Market Abuse Unit and Fort Worth Regional Office handled the civil action. The charges are allegations, and Jennings is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The case fits the Market Abuse Unit’s continued focus on misappropriation sourced from personal relationships rather than corporate insiders themselves.The post SEC and DOJ charge New Jersey man over $2.7m insider trading scheme first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

The SEC and CFTC have opened a 60-day window on harmonising the definitions that divide their two derivatives regimes; for once the news is not a rule but an invitation to redraw lines that have held since Dodd-Frank Title VII. The joint request for comment asks where the swap and security-based-swap definitions still misfire, which exclusions from the swap definition need tightening, and how far event-based products sit on either side of the fence. It is the latest move in a fast sequence. The agencies signed a memorandum of understanding on 11 March and stood up a Joint Harmonization Initiative; a joint interpretation setting a crypto-asset taxonomy followed days later; and the two requests for comment now span both product definitions and swap data reporting. The order is deliberate: settle the jurisdictional boundary first, codify second. For books that straddle the line, the product-definitions paper is the one to read. The swap versus security-based-swap split has long pushed near-identical instruments into separate rulebooks, with the duplicative registration and reporting that follows; cleaner definitions are where that cost comes out. The live wildcard is event-based products. Atkins has signalled that national securities exchanges are circling them while the CFTC moves toward prediction-markets rulemaking, so the comment file will double as the arena where that turf question is fought. Read it for what it is: this is consultation, not law. The MOU itself creates no new obligations, and the agencies are asking, not deciding. The harmonisation so far is coordination, interpretation and now comment, with the binding rules still ahead. The useful frame is the contrast across the Atlantic: Brussels long ago consolidated its operational and market rules into single regimes, while Washington is only now stitching the two-regulator split that has defined US derivatives oversight since 2010. The seam is finally being sewn; the comment window is where the stitching gets decidedThe post The SEC and CFTC put their jurisdictional seams out for comment first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Two more outages in a single June weekend, at CME and at Bank of America, ended the same way: an acknowledgement that something had failed, and no account of what or why. That silence is the story, and it is where the United States and Europe have split; Europe now compels a firm to explain a major outage, and the US, in most cases, does not. CME Direct went dark for around four hours on 22 June; CME called it a third-party network issue and named neither the provider nor a cause. Two days earlier Bank of America’s mobile and online banking failed for thousands of customers, and the bank said nothing at all. Both landed softly, but by luck rather than design; BofA’s outage fell on a Saturday with US markets shut, and CME’s hit a quieter afternoon while Globex kept running. Move either by a few hours and the silence would have mattered a great deal more. In Europe that silence would not be an option. DORA requires a financial entity to report a major ICT incident to its regulator, with a final report carrying the full root-cause analysis within a month, and to inform affected clients without undue delay; ESMA’s 2023 market-outages Opinion separately requires trading venues to communicate with the market during a failure. The duty to say something is written into law. In the US it largely is not, and even the recourse is thin; under CME Rule 578 the exchange caps its liability for losses from any inability to use its systems, so a user is left with neither an explanation nor a remedy. The contrast is structural, not cosmetic. Europe has one binding regime, DORA, across roughly twenty types of financial entity, switched on since January 2025. The US has a patchwork. The SEC’s Regulation SCI binds securities exchanges but explicitly excludes securities futures exchanges, so it does not even reach CME; bank operational resilience rests on the 2020 interagency Sound Practices paper, which the agencies were careful to say creates no new rules and applies only to the largest institutions. Binding for some, guidance for others, and no general duty anywhere to tell a customer why the screen went blank. None of this is about compensation; neither side promises a payout. It is about whether a firm must account for itself when critical infrastructure fails. Europe has decided it must; the US has decided, for now, that an outage can pass with a press line and nothing more. For desks routing flow or client money through US venues, that is the gap to weigh before the next failure lands on a busier day.The post Two outages, no answers, and a transatlantic disclosure gap first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

The June flash PMIs split the major economies cleanly; the US accelerated to a five-month high as Germany sank to a 43-month low and the UK turned to contraction. The divergence underwrites the same higher-for-longer Fed stance now pressing on gold. The US composite rose to 52.2, above the 51.2 consensus, with manufacturing at 55.7, its strongest in 49 months. The detail is less comfortable; factory employment fell at the sharpest pace outside the 2020 shock since the financial crisis, even as output surged, and S&P Global put the implied second-quarter growth pace near 1% annualised. A strong header over a softening labour line. Germany’s composite fell to 46.8 from 48.1, a 43-month low. The UK was weaker still; services activity contracted for the first time since April 2025, manufacturing new orders hit a six-month low, and total private-sector output fell at its steepest pace of the year. For the rate read the split is the point. US resilience gives the Fed cover to hold its line, while euro-area and UK softness widens the growth and policy gap; that is dollar-supportive.The post In Brief: Flash PMIs split the majors as US pulls clear of Europe first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Gold has fallen below $4,100 an ounce to a seven-month low; the move is monetary, not geopolitical. A hawkish Federal Reserve and an interim US-Iran agreement have pulled the rate-cut hope and the war premium out of the metal in the same week. The Fed held rates at its June meeting but made clear it is not done; nine of nineteen policymakers projected at least one further increase this year, and futures now price a December hike near 90%. The dollar index has pushed back above 100 on the repricing, and the real-rate path has turned against a non-yielding asset. That is the dominant leg. The geopolitical leg has reversed. The interim agreement between Washington and Tehran has eased pressure on the Strait of Hormuz and taken the risk premium out of crude; lower oil has stripped the inflation-hedge bid that carried gold through the spring. Spot now sits around $4,110, against the all-time high of $5,589 set on 28 January. For dealing desks the move is a positioning unwind, not a haven flight; the same dollar strength weighs across the metals complex and the dollar crosses, with silver down harder than gold. The balance of risk is two-sided; a softer US inflation print, or any slippage in the Iran timetable, hands the safe-haven bid straight back. Both are live within weeks, which is why the unwind has stayed orderly.The post Gold falls below $4,100 as the monetary headwind reasserts first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Australian headline inflation cooled to 4.0% in the year to May, down from 4.2%; the move is mechanical, and the underlying picture did not soften. The RBA’s preferred trimmed mean rose to 3.6% from 3.4%, and the headline fall leans on fuel, where the lower oil prices behind gold’s slide did much of the work. Automotive fuel fell 11.9% on the month, carrying the 1 April excise halving and the recent drop in world crude. Strip that and the sticky components held; electricity is 21.1% higher over the year as government rebates roll off, and housing rose 6.5%. Headline CPI fell 0.7% in original terms on the month and 0.1% seasonally adjusted. The read for the RBA is unhelpful. Three cash-rate increases into 2026, a cooler headline driven by a tax change and cheaper oil gives no cover to ease while the trimmed mean climbs; the bank stays restrictive. For the Australian dollar that is supportive at the margin, not the pivot some had positioned for.The post In Brief: Australian CPI cools to 4.0%, but the core moves the other way first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Alphabet shed close to $250bn in market value on Monday after two of Google’s most senior AI researchers left for rivals. What began as a single-name talent shock has since broadened into a semiconductor-led sell-off across global tech. Noam Shazeer, VP of engineering and co-lead of Google’s Gemini models, announced his move to OpenAI on 18 June; the next day John Jumper, the Nobel laureate behind AlphaFold, said he was leaving DeepMind for Anthropic. With US markets shut on Friday for the holiday, the reaction landed in Monday’s session; the shares fell as much as 7.2% intraday and closed 5% to 6% lower, the worst session in about a year. The Nasdaq fell 1.3% that day as Amazon, Meta and Microsoft also dropped, and only the Dow closed higher; the talent exits were the spark, not an isolated move against a rising market. By Tuesday the selling had broadened into a global rout. A near-10% drop in South Korea’s KOSPI led an overnight sell-off in memory chips that took the Nasdaq down 2.2% and the S&P 500 down 1.4%; Micron fell more than 11%, Qualcomm around 8% and Nvidia about 4%. Alphabet fell around 2%, less than the index, as the driver shifted from its own headlines to a sector-wide reassessment of AI spending against returns. By Wednesday the tape steadied. US index futures rose and Alphabet gained around 0.5% in early trade, after S&P Global confirmed the stock will join the Dow Jones Industrial Average from the start of trading next Monday, replacing Verizon. The promotion lands in the same week the talent exits wiped a quarter of a trillion dollars off the company. The next catalyst is Micron’s earnings after Wednesday’s close, read as a direct gauge of AI demand. The move sits on a stock already under scrutiny for its spending. In its 3 June investor presentation Alphabet guided 2026 capital expenditure to $180bn to $190bn, around six times the 2022 level and double last year, with a further significant rise flagged for 2027. To fund it, the company announced a proposed $80bn equity raise earlier this month, including a $10bn investment from Berkshire Hathaway; an oversubscribed underwritten tranche took the expected total to around $85bn. Management framed the raise as protecting financial flexibility; the market is reading the same spend more warily. The durable thread is the talent war, with Anthropic and OpenAI now pricing frontier researchers at levels Google has to match; the open question is whether the build pays. The next test is Alphabet’s second-quarter earnings in mid July.The post Alphabet sheds $250bn as the AI talent war reaches the tape first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Apple App Store, Google Play and inside the TabTrade Secure Account Portal, with a Windows version to follow. Clients open and fund a TabTrade account and complete verification, then go into the app to review providers and set their limits before copying anything. “Plenty of people want a position in the markets without sitting on the charts all day,” said Benjamin Boulter, Founder and CEO of TabTrade. “Copy trading gives them that. The part that matters to us is that the client keeps control. You decide how much goes behind a strategy, and you can switch it off whenever you want.” Trading CFDs and margin forex carries a high level of risk and can result in losses that exceed deposits. Copy trading does not remove that risk, and a strategy provider’s past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Full details on how copy trading works are at TabTrade Copy Trading About TabTrade TabTrade is a global forex and CFD broker with zero average spreads on major forex pairs. Clients trade forex, indices, commodities, metals, shares and cryptocurrencies on MetaTrader 5 and cTrader, with a $0 minimum deposit and institutional-grade execution through Equinix LD5 data centres. TabTrade Ltd is incorporated and registered in Saint Lucia under the International Business Companies Act (Registration Number 2025-00919), and client funds are held in segregated accounts. Markets made simple.The post TabTrade Launches Copy Trading for Forex and CFD Traders first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Bloomberg said Tuesday that Mackenzie Investments has implemented its Multi-Asset Class Factor Model, known as MAC3, to strengthen portfolio risk forecasting and factor exposure analysis across its approximately C$265 billion in assets under management. The Toronto-based investment firm said the adoption of Bloomberg’s next-generation risk model will enhance its ability to identify factor-driven portfolio risks, detect unintended exposures from allocation shifts, and conduct forward-looking risk forecasting in volatile market conditions. Konstantin Boehmer, Managing Director and Head of Fixed Income at Mackenzie Investments, stated that the implementation addresses a fundamental portfolio management objective.  “A portfolio should only carry the risk we intend,” he said. “With Bloomberg’s MAC3, we can now measure and manage those risks with greater precision and consistency — across asset classes, strategies, and market conditions.” MAC3 is a cross-asset factor risk model calculated daily across more than 3,000 factors, covering equities, fixed income, commodities and alternatives.  Bloomberg said it supports workflows including factor-based attribution, stress testing and quantitative strategy validation. Jose Menchero, Head of Portfolio Analytics Research at Bloomberg, said Mackenzie required models that could integrate seamlessly into existing investment workflows.  “Bloomberg MAC3 models deliver a consistent cross-asset factor framework, providing a full picture of the term structure of risk,” he commented, enabling portfolio managers to use longer-term forecasts for strategic positioning while monitoring short-term risk for tactical hedging. Mackenzie already uses several Bloomberg products, including its AIM order management solution, PORT Enterprise for portfolio analytics and ESG Manager for sustainability data.  MAC3 also serves as the underlying risk model powering Bloomberg’s PORT Enterprise, which counts more than 800 institutional clients.The post Mackenzie Investments Adopts Bloomberg Risk Model to Sharpen Portfolio Forecasting first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

eToro said Tuesday that it has integrated with Singpass, Singapore’s national digital identity system, allowing Singapore residents to verify their accounts without manually uploading identification documents. The integration enables new users to authenticate their eToro trading accounts using the same digital identity credentials used to access government services in Singapore.  Personal information is retrieved directly and securely from Singpass during registration, removing the need for document uploads and reducing onboarding delays. Singpass is used by millions of Singapore residents to access hundreds of government and private sector services and is widely regarded as one of the more secure national digital identity platforms globally.  eToro said the integration reflects its commitment to providing users with “peace of mind as much as performance.” The brokerage explained that to open an account, new users select the Singpass option at the account setup screen, authenticate through the Singpass app or credentials, and have their information retrieved automatically.  Once verified, users gain access to thousands of global assets across stocks, commodities and currencies on the eToro platform. By leveraging existing national digital infrastructure, the company aims to reduce friction in the sign-up process while maintaining regulatory compliance around identity verification. eToro described the Singpass integration as providing “a new level of trust and access,” positioning the tie-up as a way to give Singapore investors faster entry to global markets through a familiar and already-trusted authentication system.The post eToro Integrates with Singapore’s Singpass for Streamlined Investor Onboarding first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Plus500 has announced the launch of 24/5 CFD trading on selected stocks and ETFs, offering customers continuous market access five days a week through its proprietary platform. The move comes as extended-hours trading accounts for a growing share of global retail activity. The fintech group says the launch reflects its accelerating pace of product innovation, building on an expanding multi-asset offering that includes its US prediction markets business. Among the instruments available at launch is a CFD on SpaceX. The company said the inclusion positions customers alongside a rapidly growing segment of retail investors already trading outside traditional market hours, across time zones, and ahead of key global events. Plus500 plans to expand the 24/5 offering over time, adding stocks and ETFs based on customer demand, liquidity conditions, and operational factors. The phased rollout aims to maintain a stable trading environment in line with the group’s focus on institutional-grade execution and risk management. Chief Executive Officer David Zruia said: “Today’s markets operate around the clock, and increasingly our customers expect the flexibility to do the same. The launch of 24/5 CFD trading on stocks and ETFs is our direct response, giving them the ability to act the moment an earnings release lands, a central bank speaks, or a market-moving event unfolds, regardless of the time or time zone.” Plus500 described the launch as another step in its commitment to continuous innovation, following its recent entry into US prediction markets.The post Plus500 Launches 24/5 CFD Trading on Stocks and ETFs first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR) has appointed Mark Nichols as Co-President of Digital Assets, reinforcing the firm’s commitment to modernizing financial market infrastructure and expanding its digital asset capabilities. Nichols will work alongside Co-President German Soto Sanchez, jointly overseeing strategy, product development, and execution across Broadridge’s tokenization and digital asset businesses. The appointment was announced on June 23. Nichols brings wide-ranging industry experience to the role. He joins from Ernst and Young US LLP, where he served as a Partner and co-led EY’s digital asset consulting business while overseeing its market infrastructure consulting practice. Earlier in his career, he managed product functions spanning FCM, collateral, and funding within Deutsche Bank’s fixed income division. “Digital assets are a critical part of the next generation of market infrastructure,” said CEO Tim Gokey. “Mark’s combination of strategic vision, market infrastructure expertise, and deep knowledge of tokenization will help us accelerate those efforts and support the adoption of tokenized securities.” Nichols said he was excited by the opportunity, citing Broadridge’s strong market position. “Broadridge is uniquely positioned to help shape how digital assets are integrated into the financial system at scale,” he stated. The hire comes as Broadridge continues to expand its tokenization business. Its Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) platform is the world’s largest institutional settlement platform for tokenized real assets, processing approximately $365 billion per day. Broadridge also provides on-chain proxy voting, governance tools, and post-trade digital asset infrastructure. Broadridge is a member of the S&P 500 Index with over 15,000 employees across 21 countries.The post Broadridge Names Mark Nichols Co-President of Digital Assets first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

iSAM Securities Apex has announced the integration of CMC Markets into its liquidity provider (LP) network, giving brokers access to a globally recognised, multi-asset institutional liquidity source through the Apex platform. The integration connects CMC Markets’ institutional-grade execution capabilities to brokers via Apex’s ultra-low latency technology stack, which is built on the same infrastructure underpinning iSAM Securities’ own market-making operations. The architecture combines network design, physical servers, CPU pinning, and low-latency engineering to deliver tight, fast pricing across all available LP integrations. Brokers using Apex can now access CMC’s liquidity alongside the platform’s existing LP network, offering greater flexibility in how they source, manage, and optimise their liquidity setup. Dennis Weissert, Chief Commercial Officer at iSAM Securities Apex, highlighted the practical value of the partnership for brokers: “Brokers are looking for technology that helps them move faster, manage risk more effectively and operate with greater control. By integrating with CMC, we are adding an institutional, market-leading liquidity option within Apex, while keeping everything connected to the risk, analytics and price construction tools that brokers already rely on.” Chris Cheverall, Head of UK at CMC Markets, added: “This integration represents another step in the continued expansion of CMC Markets’ institutional offering. By making our liquidity available through Apex, we are broadening access to CMC’s execution capabilities and supporting brokers seeking greater flexibility in how they access and manage liquidity across global markets.” The announcement follows the recent launch of Radar Network Alerts, Apex’s feature designed to help risk teams identify linked high-risk client groups earlier. The CMC Markets integration is available to brokers immediately.The post iSAM Securities Apex Integrates CMC Markets Liquidity Into Its Broker Technology Platform first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) has unveiled Composer by SoFi, an AI-powered investing platform designed to help retail investors create, test, and automate sophisticated investment strategies using natural language, following the company’s acquisition of Composer Securities LLC. The platform addresses a longstanding challenge for everyday investors: turning market ideas into actionable, repeatable strategies without requiring coding skills or extensive portfolio management experience. Composer by SoFi allows users to describe their investment thesis in plain English, with the AI guiding them through building, backtesting, and automating a rules-based strategy step by step. The platform offers three main pathways for investors. Users can design a fully custom strategy from scratch, browse a library of more than 2,000 community-built strategies, or construct a diversified portfolio by combining multiple strategies suited to different market conditions. SoFi CEO Anthony Noto described the acquisition as a reflection of the company’s broader approach to integrating innovative technology into its ecosystem. “As AI becomes a foundational part of investing, Composer by SoFi strengthens our ability to deliver powerful investing tools through an experience that is simple, intuitive, and accessible,” Noto said. Unlike agentic trading tools that rely on AI to make continuous autonomous trading decisions, Composer focuses on helping investors build rules-based strategies they can understand and control, with full visibility into historical performance before activation. The launch follows last month’s introduction of SoFi Coach, an AI-powered financial assistant. Composer will be progressively integrated into the broader SoFi ecosystem and made available to SoFi Plus members over time.The post SoFi Launches AI-Powered Investing Platform Composer by SoFi first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Capital.com secured dual FSCA approval in South Africa this week, days after Axi confirmed a dealer licence in Mauritius. Two fully-stacked brokers, two regulators, one move: the licence is not about credibility; it is about reaching the emerging-market retail their top-tier permissions were never built to serve. Capital.com took the harder, local route. The FSCA authorised it as both an Over-the-Counter Derivatives Provider and a Category 1 Financial Services Provider, the pairing a market-maker needs to onboard South African clients and run CFDs across more than 5,000 markets, crypto CFDs included. It follows the group’s recent authorisation by Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority, and it put a local face on the move: Travis Robson, formerly of IG and Trive, as South Africa CEO. None of this was a credibility exercise. Capital.com already runs regulated entities under the FCA, CySEC, ASIC, the Bahamas, the UAE CMA and the Bermuda Monetary Authority. South Africa cannot be served from any of them. Axi took the offshore-hub route. Axi Markets Mauritius took a Category SEC-2.1B Investment Dealer licence on 14 May; the firm announced it on 17 June. Its stack, ASIC, FMA New Zealand, the FCA, a DFSA Category 4 licence in the DIFC and CySEC in Cyprus, is every bit as top-tier, and just as unsuited to the job. A Mauritius licence is not a local-market permission; it is a regulated address between Africa, Asia and the Middle East, with the banking and payment rails an offshore registration in St Vincent never provides, from which one entity reaches many markets at once. Deriv (Mauritius) and Edgewater Markets have taken the same route within the year. Two routes, one destination. Capital.com goes market by market, taking a local licence wherever it wants to onboard, because regulators like the FSCA require it and enforce it; the Globex360 penalty established that a Category 1 licence without ODP authorisation is not enough for a firm that faces its own clients. Axi takes a single offshore hub and serves a region from it. Local entity or regional hub, the logic is identical: the binding constraint on growth is no longer credibility or technology; it is permission and payments in the markets where the clients actually are. Neither route is a guaranteed win. AETOS wound down its offshore CFD operation under its Mauritius entity and stopped onboarding, having already surrendered its UK FCA licence and dissolved its UK company; the hub works for a firm growing into it, not for one in retreat. The local route is no soft option either, the FSCA’s ODP regime is a real prudential and conduct bar, not a flag of convenience. The licence, either kind, is a tool and not a verdict. For the sector the pattern matters more than either firm. The fully-licensed broker has stopped choosing between onshore credibility and emerging-market reach; it runs both as tiers of one structure, picking the route that fits the target, a local entity where a regulator demands one, an offshore hub where a region can be served from a single address. Two such licences inside a week, from firms with nothing left to prove on credibility, say the model is no longer the exception. Two such licences inside a week, from firms with nothing left to prove on credibility, say the model is no longer the exception. From the Gulf’s rush for UAE licences to the new Indian Ocean hubs, the regulatory map is being redrawn around where the growth is.The post Capital.com, Axi and the rise of the tiered broker first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.