ASIC calls the penalty the strongest scam wake-up call yet to the banking industry, after the bank admitted systemic failures that left customers carrying the losses. The Federal Court has ordered HSBC Bank Australia to pay an AUD35 million penalty after the bank admitted serious failures in protecting customers from scams, in a case ASIC describes as one of the first of its kind globally. Sitting in Melbourne on 18 June, Justice Bennett also ordered HSBC to publish adverse publicity notices across its website, its app and in letters to affected customers. ASIC, which commenced the civil penalty proceedings in December 2024, brought the case under the ePayments Code it administers. Between January 2020 and August 2024 HSBC received more than 1,000 reports of unauthorised transactions totalling about AUD34.6 million, with reports surging roughly 380% across 2023 and 2024 as impersonation scams escalated. The admitted failures are the substance. HSBC had scam controls on some payment systems but not on the internal transfer rail where the majority of customer losses occurred. It took an average of 144 days to investigate scam reports, did not apply the ePayments Code rules governing when the bank rather than the customer should bear a loss, and lacked adequate systems to restore customers’ banking access after they had been scammed. Justice Bennett found the Code failures widespread and systemic, and held that HSBC’s delays compounded the distress of affected customers. ASIC Chair Sarah Court framed the result as a signal to the whole sector, calling the penalty “the strongest scam wake-up call yet to the banking industry” and saying banks must now ensure their dealings with scam victims help rather than hinder. HSBC has established a remediation programme that has paid around AUD21.5 million in compensation so far, with further payments due before the end of July 2026, and has recovered and returned a further AUD6.5 million to customers.The post Federal Court fines HSBC AUD35m in global-first ASIC scam-liability case first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

A ten-year ban from credit and financial services and the cancellation of Freedom Wealth Services’ licences, after ASIC found the adviser used forged client signatures and inaccurate file notes to justify ongoing fees. He is appealing. ASIC has banned financial planner Brett Anthony Newbound from all credit and financial services activities for ten years and cancelled the Australian financial services licence and Australian credit licence of his firm, Freedom Wealth Services Pty Ltd. ASIC found that, in three instances, Newbound relied on service agreements carrying client signatures the regulator determined the clients had not provided, and created or caused file notes that it found did not accurately reflect client interactions, in order to justify charging ongoing service fees. On that basis ASIC concluded he did not meet the statutory test to be a fit and proper person to operate in the credit and financial services industries. Fabricated fee justifications cut to conduct the sector has been under sustained pressure to stamp out since the Hayne Royal Commission’s fee-for-no-service findings, which makes a ten-year exclusion a predictable response rather than a surprising one. Newbound was an authorised representative of AMP Financial Planning between August 2011 and February 2021, and over the same period was the sole director of corporate authorised representative Logic Financial Services. Both the ban and the licence cancellations took effect from 1 May 2025, and the ban is recorded on ASIC’s banned and disqualified register. Newbound is the sole director and responsible manager of Freedom Wealth Services and was an authorised representative of the firm until 17 June 2026. The matter is contested. Newbound and Freedom Wealth Services have appealed to the Administrative Review Tribunal, with no hearing date yet set. Their application for a stay of ASIC’s decision and for confidentiality orders was opposed by ASIC and dismissed by the Tribunal on 16 June 2026.The post ASIC bans financial planner Brett Newbound first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing said Thursday that it has renewed its Memorandum of Understanding with China Financial Futures Exchange. The exchanges have reaffirmed their commitment to deepening collaboration and supporting the development of financial markets in both Hong Kong and Shanghai. The updated agreement was signed in Shanghai by HKEX Head of Markets Gregory Yu and CFFEX Executive Vice President Cai Xianghui, witnessed by HKEX Chief Executive Bonnie Y Chan, CFFEX Chief Executive Zhang Xiaogang, and Shanghai Municipal Financial Services Office Deputy Director Cao Yanwen. Under the renewed MOU, HKEX and CFFEX will enhance cooperation across product and business development, share research and market expertise, and facilitate personnel exchanges and training programmes between the two organisations. Both exchanges said they will continue to explore new areas of collaboration, leveraging their respective strengths to enhance mutual market connectivity and support the broader development of China’s capital markets. The renewal builds on an existing relationship between the two exchanges and reflects continued efforts to strengthen financial market links between Hong Kong and mainland China.  HKEX operates one of Asia’s most internationally connected financial markets, while CFFEX serves as China’s primary venue for financial futures and derivatives, covering equity index, treasury bond and foreign exchange futures.The post HKEX and China Financial Futures Exchange Renew Cooperation Agreement first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Euroclear said Friday that it has appointed Eric Lombard to its Board of Directors as a non-executive director, marking a return for the former French Minister of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty. Lombard previously served on the board between November 2022 and December 2024. Lombard has more than four decades of experience spanning finance, public sector leadership and government.  He served as France’s Economy and Finance Minister from 2024 to 2025, and prior to that led Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, one of France’s foremost public financial institutions, as Chief Executive from 2017 to 2024.  He currently serves as President of Halmahera, an investment company. “His extensive experience across the private and public sector combined with his strategic perspective will be of great value,” said Francesco Vanni d’Archirafi, Chairman of the Euroclear Board. “Having previously served as a member of the Board, he is already well acquainted with Euroclear and how we operate.” Lombard said he is pleased to rejoin the board at a time when resilient market infrastructure and sound governance are more important than ever, adding that Euroclear is well positioned to contribute to the European Union’s Savings and Investments Union objective.The post Euroclear Welcomes Back Former French Finance Minister Eric Lombard to Board first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

A nine-year sentence for the founder of an AI marketing startup once pitched at a AUD1 billion valuation, and a pointed signal from ASIC on director misconduct. The Federal Court of Australia has sentenced David Fairfull, former chief executive of AI marketing company Metigy, to nine years’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of five years and four months, following an ASIC investigation and a CDPP prosecution into investor deception and self-dealing. Fairfull, who pleaded guilty in November 2025, was convicted on one count of making false or misleading statements to investors, contrary to ss 1041E(1) and 1311(1) of the Corporations Act, and one count of dishonestly using his position as a director, contrary to s 184(2). The court imposed seven years and six months on the first count and three years on the second, with 18 months to run concurrently. The conduct sat behind a fundraising run that, on paper, made Metigy one of the more celebrated names in Australian martech. Per ASIC, three capital raises between October 2018 and October 2020 brought in about AUD23.4 million, and a July 2021 secondary share sale a further AUD15.7 million, with investors committing just over AUD39 million on the strength of accounts that misstated the company’s revenue and income. A further AUD50 million raise was in prospect. In November 2021 Fairfull used his directorship to cause Metigy to lend him AUD7.7 million to fund a personal purchase of residential real estate. Metigy collapsed into administration in July 2022, roughly 20 months after a AUD20 million Series B led by Cygnet Capital and a valuation that had reportedly touched AUD1 billion. Sentencing him, Justice Abraham characterised the conduct as deliberate, premeditated and sophisticated, and as dishonest acts designed for personal gain. She framed the harm in market terms, finding that offending of this kind “undermines the integrity of Australia’s financial markets and system of corporate regulation.” ASIC Chair Sarah Court used the result to restate that director-duties enforcement is an enduring priority and that the regulator will act on serious governance failures.The post Ex-Metigy CEO David Fairfull jailed for nine years in ASIC director-duties case first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

iFOREX Financial Trading Holdings Ltd (LON: IFRX) has appointed Daniel Shalom as Chief Operating Officer of the group, with immediate effect. Shalom takes responsibility for the group’s day-to-day operations, a brief that spans business operations, customer experience, product and technology. He joins with more than 20 years of experience scaling global businesses and data-driven technology platforms. Shalom spent eight years in senior executive roles at Amdocs, the global software and services provider to the telecommunications, media and financial services industries, where as Vice President of Data and AI he led a 500-person team serving Tier 1 customers. He most recently served as chief information officer at Yad Vashem, Israel’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center, where he oversaw a large-scale technology transformation programme. Group CEO Itai Sadeh said the appointment would strengthen iFOREX’s ability to keep developing its proprietary platform and “deepen AI-driven personalisation across our global client base.” Shalom said his priority would be to build on that foundation and support the group’s further growth. The appointment comes as the London-listed broker looks for catalysts to revive a share price that has seen little trading activity since February.The post iFOREX appoints Daniel Shalom as Chief Operating Officer first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

The second FINRA censure of the Bank of America unit in under a fortnight, and in both cases the weakness FINRA landed on was the same: supervision. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated has been censured and fined $175,000 by FINRA over a near three-year failure to give self-directed clients time-of-trade disclosures on municipal securities bought at a market discount. The action lands within a fortnight of a separate $225,000 FINRA censure of the same firm for failing to report more than 1,600 customer complaints. Two settlements, one regulator, one firm, and in each case a supervisory system FINRA found was not fit for purpose. Per the AWC, between January 2021 and September 2023 Merrill executed 4,181 municipal purchases worth roughly $87 million in principal across 1,072 self-directed accounts without flagging the non-de minimis market discount, and so without putting clients on notice that the accreted discount would be taxed as ordinary income rather than at the capital gains rate. FINRA treats that as material information owed at or before the point of trade. The findings turn, as they often do, on supervision. Merrill maintained no written procedures to ensure those time-of-trade disclosures reached its self-directed platform, and no process to test whether they were being made at all, breaching MSRB Rules G-47 (time of trade disclosure) and G-27 (supervision). The firm has since issued the missing disclosures and offered remediation to clients who can show the omission cost them in tax. Merrill settled without admitting or denying the findings.The post FINRA censures Merrill Lynch again, $175,000 this time, over muni bond disclosure failures first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Broadridge Financial Solutions has joined Project Glasswing, an initiative led by AI company Anthropic focused on using frontier artificial intelligence models to help secure critical software infrastructure and strengthen cyber defence across key industries. The initiative is said to bring together organisations that build or maintain software for critical infrastructure, including financial services, to address an evolving cybersecurity threat landscape.  Participants are expected to use Claude Mythos Preview, Anthropic’s unreleased frontier model, to bolster defensive security efforts across foundational systems that collectively represent a significant portion of the world’s shared cyberattack surface. Broadridge believes its participation demonstrates its commitment to supporting the security and resilience of the financial services industry, in which it operates as a core infrastructure provider across capital markets, corporate governance and investor communications. “Cybersecurity is fundamental to the resilience of financial markets,” said Tim Gokey, Chief Executive of Broadridge. “We are participating in Project Glasswing to apply frontier AI models to our own systems, helping us stay ahead of emerging threats and supporting a safer financial ecosystem.”The post Broadridge Joins Anthropic’s Project Glasswing to Strengthen Cyber Defences first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Euronext said Thursday that it has launched IPOgo, a new listing solution designed to give small and medium-sized enterprises a simpler, faster and more cost-effective route to public markets via Euronext Growth. The firm noted that the solution is made possible by the adoption of the EU Listing Act. IPOgo is said to offer simplified admission documentation modelled on the EU Growth Prospectus, combined with an end-to-end digital execution process built on Euronext’s proprietary digital distribution infrastructure.  Furthermore, they stated that the solution is designed to shorten the listing timeline significantly, with Euronext describing the process as twice as fast as existing routes. For companies seeking to raise up to €12 million, IPOgo is also designed to broaden retail investor participation in IPOs. In France, where Euronext Growth hosts around 250 companies, firms using IPOgo will be able to open up to 100% of their offering to retail investors. Euronext Growth currently hosts more than 550 listed companies across Europe with a combined market capitalisation of around €40 billion, supported by an institutional investor base of more than 600 institutions across 29 countries.  Trading volumes on the market reached their highest level since 2021 in 2025, with close to a third of traded volume coming from retail investors. “With IPOgo, Euronext is taking another step to reconnect European savings with the financing needs of SMEs,” said Mathieu Caron, Head of Primary Markets at Euronext. “We are making IPOs twice as fast, simpler, and more cost-effective.” Since 2018, around 70 companies have transferred from Euronext Growth to Euronext regulated markets. Following the introduction of the Listing Act, companies listed on Euronext Growth can seek admission to regulated markets after 18 months using a simplified prospectus.The post Euronext Launches IPOgo to Fast-Track SME Listings on Euronext Growth first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: MKTX) has announced the launch of TraX Tape, a new data solution designed to deliver a clean, consolidated view of bond market activity enriched with real-time insights and contextual analytics. The launch arrives as UK and EU transparency reforms continue to reshape how bond trading data is reported and interpreted. While the reforms have increased the availability of market data, they have also introduced new layers of complexity. TraX Tape aims to address this by offering a single, standardised feed that consolidates and enhances market data, allowing clients to analyse trading activity more efficiently and with greater confidence. Built on the existing MarketAxess TraX data infrastructure, the solution aggregates information from a global network of dealers and clients and applies proprietary data cleansing processes developed over a decade. It then enriches regulatory transparency data with additional analytics, including trade direction signals and pricing context drawn from the firm’s AI-powered pricing engine, CP+. Key features include directional indicators on each trade, de-duplicated data, a single-connection view of global bond trading activity, expanded coverage, and integrated yield and spread calculations to support execution analysis. Dean Berry, Group COO and CEO of EMEA and APAC at MarketAxess, said: “Market participants have more data than ever but turning that data into actionable insight remains a challenge. TraX Tape is designed to deliver a clearer and more complete view of market activity, helping clients make more informed trading decisions.”The post MarketAxess Launches TraX Tape to Bring Clarity to Bond Market Data first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

BGC Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: BGC) has announced the launch of BGC Compute Infrastructure Markets (BGC CIM), a new division aimed at bringing institutional-grade market structure to the rapidly expanding secondary market for compute and memory capacity. The new division will sit within BGC Group’s Energy, Commodities and Shipping (ECS) business and will initially focus on the over-the-counter (OTC) market. BGC CIM will be co-led by Marc Kuber and Zach Espinosa, who will oversee dedicated brokerage support for clients navigating this emerging asset class. With AI adoption accelerating globally, compute and memory capacity have become increasingly critical assets. BGC Group says the new division is designed to deliver transparent price discovery, real-time risk management and more efficient execution for market participants, drawing on the firm’s established position as the world’s largest energy broker. Clients of BGC CIM will also have access to the broader BGC Group ecosystem, including Fenics Market Data and Lucera, the firm’s connectivity platform, both of which are expected to support the development of a more transparent and efficient marketplace for AI infrastructure. John Abularrage, Co-Chief Executive Officer of BGC Group, noted that compute and memory capacity share many characteristics with traditional commodity markets, including supply-demand volatility and forward price risk, areas where BGC has deep expertise. “As the world’s leading energy broker, BGC is uniquely positioned to help clients with execution and liquidity to achieve their long-term economic objectives in the age of AI,” Abularrage said.The post BGC Group Launches New Division to Target Growing AI Compute Market first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Sumsub has become the first identity verification and compliance platform to connect AI agents directly to its full configuration layer, enabling teams to build complete onboarding workflows from AML policy documents in minutes. The company announced the launch of its Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration alongside a new suite of AI agent skills, compatible with leading models including Claude and ChatGPT. The release represents a significant departure from traditional compliance setup processes, which have historically required manual interpretation of regulatory requirements by solution architects or technical teams. Under the new system, compliance teams can upload an AML policy document, including complex, multi-page PDFs containing country-specific risk brackets, weighted scoring tables, and conditional logic, directly to an AI agent. The agent then reads the document and automatically generates a fully configured Sumsub environment, including verification levels, risk questionnaires, and onboarding workflows, live in the customer’s dashboard. Andrew Novoselsky, Chief Product Officer at Sumsub, said the integration changes the category entirely. “A team can take their AML policy, hand it to an AI agent, and have their full environment built automatically. That is a fundamentally different category of capability from what has been available in this space.” Beyond initial setup, the integration supports day-to-day compliance tasks including applicant reviews, analytics, and verification link generation. Sensitive actions are performed in an isolated sandbox, with human approval required before any configuration changes go live. The integration is model-agnostic, with open-source agent skills published on GitHub. Sumsub has also become the first verification platform to be officially listed on the ChatGPT Apps platform.The post Sumsub Launches MCP Integration, Letting AI Agents Configure Compliance Workflows Automatically first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) have announced a joint pilot project to explore the use of e-HKD, a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), for advance margin payments during the derivatives market’s After-Hours Trading (AHT) session. The initiative, announced on Thursday, seeks to fix a longstanding operational problem. Under the current system, Clearing Participants (CPs) must submit advance margin deposit requests to HKFE Clearing Corporation Limited (HKCC) by 3:00 p.m. for funds to count toward the upcoming AHT session. Because e-HKD runs on a 24/7 basis, the pilot aims to remove that deadline, giving participants more freedom to manage margin payments outside regular banking hours. HKEX is inviting HKCC Clearing Participants to take part in Real-Value Trial Transactions on an optional basis. Any wider rollout remains subject to regulatory approval and market readiness. The announcement comes as Hong Kong’s derivatives market continues to grow, with average daily volume (ADV) rising from a record 1.66 million contracts in 2025 to over 1.78 million contracts in the first five months of 2026. HKEX Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Lau said the project “reflects the shared commitment of HKEX and the HKMA to embracing innovation, strengthening the resilience of our markets and reinforcing Hong Kong’s position as a leading international financial centre.” HKMA Deputy Chief Executive Howard Lee added that the pilot “demonstrates a wholesale application of CBDC in a live market environment,” pointing to the authority’s focus on improving financial infrastructure efficiency.The post HKEX and HKMA Launch e-HKD Pilot for Derivatives After-Hours Trading Margin Payments first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

FV Bank, the regulated US digital bank based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, has announced an expansion of its financial infrastructure platform, bringing stablecoin settlement, digital asset custody, payments and cross-border banking together in a single environment. The first product under the expanded platform, Stablecoin Invoicing, is now live, with further capabilities due over the coming weeks. According to FV Bank, Stablecoin Invoicing lets businesses generate itemised invoices directly from their dashboard, send them by email or a shareable payment link, and accept payment in USDC or PYUSD. The company says counterparties can pay via WalletConnect, QR code, or a direct transfer from a wallet or exchange, with funds settling in USD once received. The product is aimed at B2B businesses, SaaS platforms, marketplaces, freelancers and cross-border operators. The mechanics build on capabilities FV Bank already runs. The bank has supported direct stablecoin deposits with automatic conversion to USD for some time, having integrated Circle’s USDC in 2021, Tether’s USDT in 2024 and PayPal’s PYUSD in early 2025. It has also positioned USDC invoicing as a use case since 2022, so a dedicated invoicing product is an extension of an existing workflow rather than a new line of business. FV Bank says further products will follow over the coming weeks, including unified payment collection across fiat and stablecoins, stablecoin-powered cross-border payments, network-branded virtual cards, API-managed accounts, and APIs and SDKs for developers and enterprise teams. The bank describes these as available for direct deployment or for integration by fintechs and technology platforms that want to extend banking, payments and digital asset features to their own clients without taking on the underlying compliance and operational burden. The announcement lands as stablecoins continue to move from crypto-native tools towards wider use in cross-border settlement and treasury operations, helped by greater regulatory clarity in the US following the GENIUS Act. FV Bank says it has spent years building the custody, compliance and operational framework needed to support this model. “Banking, payments, and digital assets have evolved on separate rails for too long,” said Miles Paschini, CEO of FV Bank, who said the expanded platform is intended to let clients move funds across traditional and blockchain rails within one regulated environment. Nitin Agarwal, Chief Revenue Officer, said the bank had made long-term investments in the compliance, custody and operational infrastructure required to bridge traditional banking with digital asset settlement, and pointed to growing client demand for real-time and programmable payment infrastructure. FV Bank says the platform supports real-time settlement across digital assets and fiat in more than 45 currencies through its API-driven rails. That figure is the bank’s own and is a notable step up from the 13 outbound currencies it cited in early 2025, so it is worth confirming directly before relying on it. The company says additional platform announcements will follow through 2026.The post FV Bank launches stablecoin invoicing as it expands its banking and payments platform first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

Australia’s Scams Prevention Framework has been law since early 2025. The movement now is at its edges, among the sectors it has not yet named. The codes are out for consultation until 25 June, and the first measure consumers will actually see, ACMA’s SMS Sender ID Register, switches on on 1 July. The designation covers banking, telecommunications and digital platforms. Currently Forex and CFD brokers, payment firms and crypto venues sit outside it. Crypto Treasury has already named cryptocurrency wallets, with superannuation, among the sectors the framework can be extended to. The power to expand is in the Act, and the bank and platform codes being settled this month are the template a crypto code would inherit: governance and training duties, real-time detection and disruption, mandatory scam-intelligence reporting to the ACCC, redress through internal dispute resolution and AFCA. A designation away, in other words, and the draft already tells digital-asset businesses with Australian users what the day after looks like. Advertising The nearer reach is into financial marketing. The draft platform code requires verification, before an advertisement runs, that an advertiser whose product needs an Australian licence holds one, an AFSL in the case of financial products, with parallel checks that the advertiser is not banned and that whoever fronts it is authorised. For anyone buying Australian clients through paid social and search, the platform becomes the licence check, applied before the impression rather than after the complaint. Acquisition funnels built on light-touch ad approval are precisely the target. The rails The bank code sets the conditions the money moves through: payee confirmation before transfers settle, identity verification, transaction and account monitoring, targeted warnings on high-risk payments, recall requests, account freezes. The friction banks apply to outbound payments they read as high-risk is the environment broker deposit and withdrawal flows will operate inside. Almost every obligation in the draft is a civil penalty provision, under a regime that tops out at $50 million. Redress is “no wrong door”: a complaint to any business in the chain, cooperation to apportion liability, AFCA as the single external scheme. The protected class takes in Australians offshore using Australian-based services, so it does not stop at the coast. Commencement is proposed for 31 March 2027, so this is trajectory rather than deadline. The shape is settled: cross-sector liability, mandatory intelligence-sharing, reimbursement when firms fall short, the regime the UK and EU are reading closely. The names not yet on the designation have the most reason to read it first.The post Crypto Is Next Under Australia’s Scams Prevention Framework first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

FINRA has censured and fined New York-based broker-dealer Outset Global Trading Limited $130,000 after finding that the firm’s anti-money laundering programme was not reasonably designed to detect and report suspicious transactions over a four-year period. According to the Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent, Outset served as an outsourced trading desk for US and foreign institutional customers between January 2022 and December 2025, executing equities and options transactions, including trades in thinly traded, low-priced securities. FINRA found that the firm’s written AML compliance programme failed to identify red flags relevant to its business model, including indicators of insider trading, market manipulation, pump-and-dump schemes, and trading activity representing a significant proportion of daily volume in thinly traded securities. From 2022 through July 2024, Outset relied on a manual review of its daily trade blotter for AML surveillance, an approach FINRA found inadequate as the firm’s business grew. The manual system was not designed to detect patterns of suspicious trading across accounts or multiple days. The firm introduced an automated surveillance system in August 2024, but that system did not capture options trades until December 2025, and its market dominance parameters were set too broadly to flag meaningful activity. FINRA added that one customer also traded securities on the same day it published research reports on those issuers, a red flag the firm failed to detect. Outset revised its AML compliance programme in January 2025 and updated its surveillance system in December 2025. The firm consented to FINRA’s findings without admitting or denying them.The post FINRA Fines Outset Global Trading Over AML Programme Failures first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

The dollar’s post-Fed surge has stuck. The US Dollar Index broke above 100 on Wednesday’s hawkish hold and, rather than fading overnight, has dug in above the level into Thursday, its firmest in over a year. A first-day jump on a hawkish surprise often gives ground back as positioning settles, this one has not. With the FOMC flipping its 2026 projection from a cut to a hike and Treasury yields higher across the curve, the market is treating higher-for-longer as the new base case rather than a knee-jerk. The majors are wearing it. The yen is pinned near two-year lows despite this week’s Bank of Japan hike, the Australian dollar is at multi-week lows, and sterling is soft ahead of the Bank of England decision at noon, where a hold at 3.75% is expected. The dollar is also holding firm even as oil keeps sliding on the US-Iran deal, the opposite of the usual reflex. The next test is the BoE, and then how the dollar trades once the initial Fed move has fully washed through.The post In Brief: Dollar stuck above 100 as the Warsh Fed’s gains hold first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

The headlines have the big strokes right. Kevin Warsh’s first meeting was hawkish, and it was pointedly independent. The detail worth your time is sitting underneath: the Fed hardened its line on inflation at the exact moment energy prices were falling. By now the shape of Wednesday is familiar. The FOMC held at 3.50% to 3.75%, the new chair stripped the statement back to around 130 words, and the dot plot flipped the next move from a cut to a hike. Read as a story about Warsh, it is a tale of a hawkish, deliberately independent Fed reasserting that it sets policy on the data rather than the politics. All true, and all over the wires. The more revealing part is the timing. The same week the Committee marked up its inflation forecasts, oil was in freefall. The US-Iran deal has pulled crude down roughly 40% from its conflict peak, with Brent near $78 and WTI near $75. The textbook reaction to that is disinflation, and with it the room to ease. A central bank under political pressure to cut could have pointed at the oil chart and called it cover. The Fed did the opposite. It lifted its 2026 headline PCE projection to 3.6% from 2.7% in March. More tellingly, it raised core PCE to 3.3%. Core strips energy out entirely, so an upward revision there is the Committee saying in numbers what it would not spell out in words: the inflation problem is broad, and it is not going to be solved at the petrol pump. The statement itself framed energy as just one of several supply shocks in certain sectors, not the main event. Warsh made the same point without dwelling on it. Inflation, he noted, has been “running well ahead” of the 2% goal for “more than five years”, language that frames the problem as embedded rather than a passing geopolitical spike. Set against a backdrop of tumbling energy costs, that is a deliberate choice of emphasis. He paired it with the line that did the rounds, that the Committee “will deliver price stability”, but the substance sat in the projections, not the soundbite. None of which means the Fed expects the squeeze to last. The same projections have total PCE inflation, in Warsh’s words, at “3.6 percent this year, 2.3 percent next year”, so this is a 2026 stance rather than a call that prices stay hot indefinitely. The point is narrower and more immediate: cheaper oil is not going to pull inflation back to target on its own this year. This is where the hawkish and independent reads actually fuse. The genuinely independent move was not the unanimous vote. It was declining the dovish narrative that was being handed to the Fed on a plate. Fading war risk, collapsing oil and a White House that wants cuts all pointed one way. The Fed looked at its core forecast and went the other. For anyone trading the dollar, that is the takeaway the rate headline misses. The greenback firmed even as oil sank, because the message was that higher-for-longer is not conditional on energy relief. Cheaper crude is not, in this Fed’s view, going to do its job for it.The post In case you missed it: the Fed just looked straight through cheaper oil first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

The ECB’s Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo) has published its formal input into the European Commission’s review of the Shareholder Rights Directive, and its central recommendation is blunt: the directive should be converted into a directly applicable Investor Rights Regulation, with its protections extended beyond shareholders to investors in all instruments issued through European CSDs. The report, “Facilitating the exercise of investor rights” (June 2026), sets out 30 measures designed to feed the Commission’s Savings and Investments Union (SIU) strategy. Behind the institutional language sits a substantial piece of evidence-gathering, a survey across 20 European markets, and the findings amount to an official documentation of how widely the current rules are ignored. From directive to regulation The structural proposal continues a clear direction of travel in EU financial regulation. The Commission’s Market Integration and Supervision Package, published in December, already signalled a preference for converting directives into regulations to achieve uniform rules across Member States. AMI-SeCo applies that logic to SRD II: a directive transposed across Member States has produced fragmented national practices and divergent scopes, France’s disclosure rules cover bonds and funds, Norway’s extend to unlisted equities, and persistent legal uncertainty for intermediaries operating cross-border. The proposed Investor Rights Regulation would also widen the perimeter. Rights currently afforded to shareholders in listed equities would extend to bondholders and investors in any instrument issued through an EEA CSD, supported by a harmonised definition of “end investor”, the natural or legal person on whose account securities are held with the last intermediary in the chain. The equity-specific language of “shareholder” would give way to “investor” throughout. Other headline measures include abolishing the optional 0.5% threshold below which issuers cannot identify shareholders, scrapping “targeted” identification requests, mandating ISO 20022 messaging for issuers and every intermediary in the custody chain, and requiring issuers to deliver corporate event data to their CSD as a single golden source for the entire market. The compliance picture the survey reveals What distinguishes this report from standard consultation fare is the fact-finding. AMI-SeCo surveyed issuers, agents, CSDs and intermediaries across 20 markets on how the shareholder identification process actually functions and the results are unflattering. A median 8.75% of identification requests are simply never forwarded down the custody chain, with one entity reporting daily occurrences across all markets. The same median proportion of requests receive no response at all. Late responses run at a median 5%, with some investment banks and prime brokers taking up to three months to reply, when they reply. Data quality is worse. In the German market, 90% of responses from intermediaries classify the shareholder type as “Unknown”, a designation the report notes should be virtually impossible, since intermediaries must always be able to distinguish client assets from their own. Shareholder names arrive incorrect or missing in up to 90% of responses from some global custodians; one issuer reported receiving the names of defunct entities, citing Credit Suisse, now legally part of UBS, as an example. Email addresses are absent from 90% or more of responses in nearly four-fifths of reported cases. Then there are the fees. One intermediary reported being invoiced €50,000 for a single identification response, charged at €0.08 per holder identified; flat fees of €200–300 per request are typical in Germany, which the report’s respondents queried given that most intermediaries charge nothing. Some intermediaries charge for responses they never validly deliver. Most pointed is the extraterritorial picture: SRD II applies to third-country intermediaries holding in-scope securities; but the report records that US and Asian banks frequently take the view that it does not extend to them, or that local privacy law takes precedence and that there are currently no consequences for ignoring it. Measure 30 draws the obvious conclusion, calling for consideration of stronger enforcement. What this means beyond the custody industry Post-trade plumbing rarely makes headlines, but the direction here is relevant to any firm in the chain between European issuers and end investors, including brokers offering cash equities and bonds, who sit squarely within the intermediary obligations this framework governs. A regulation, applied uniformly, with mandatory machine-readable messaging, no thresholds, harmonised deadlines and credible enforcement would convert what many intermediaries have evidently treated as optional into hard compliance obligations with sanctions attached. The timeline runs through the Commission’s SRD review: a Call for Evidence and public consultation opened on 11 February 2026 and closed on 6 May 2026, with a legislative proposal indicatively planned for Q4 2026. AMI-SeCo’s parallel Single Rulebook for Corporate Events is scheduled to be developed through 2026 and beyond. Nothing in this report is law yet, but as input from the Eurosystem’s own market infrastructure advisory body, it is about as strong a signal of regulatory direction as the post-trade world gets.The post ECB advisory group calls for SRD II to become an Investor Rights Regulation  first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.

OptionMetrics announced on Wednesday that it has released IvyDB Canada 5.0, an updated version of its historical Canadian options database. The company said the move will offeri institutional investors, hedge funds and quantitative researchers greater flexibility in pricing methodologies, more accurate implied volatilities and a smoother volatility surface for backtesting and risk assessment. The database covers more than 300 optionable securities from Canadian exchanges, with historical data and daily updates available for most securities since March 2007.  Key additions in the 5.0 release are said to include the option to incorporate borrow rates (the interest cost associated with holding a stock intended for short sale), into options price calculations, or to use legacy methodologies, or both simultaneously for comparison purposes. The update also integrates Woodseer Dividend Forecast data directly into the dataset, enabling more accurate assessment of dividend strategies and improving the precision of implied volatility calculations across covered securities. The release comes as Canadian options trading continues to grow. The Montreal Exchange reported an average of 950,000 Canadian derivatives contracts traded daily in the fourth quarter of 2025, a 10% increase year-on-year, with rises in both ETF and equity options volumes. “As the premier provider of historical options data, analytics, and volatility worldwide, we are committed to giving institutional investors and academics access to the highest quality data,” said Eran Steinberg, Chief Operating Officer at OptionMetrics. The methodology updates in IvyDB Canada 5.0 align with similar changes made earlier this year to OptionMetrics’ flagship IvyDB US 7.0 and IvyDB ETF 5.0 products, enabling users to more easily port strategies between the US and Canadian datasets.The post OptionMetrics Launches IvyDB Canada 5.0 Amid Options Market Growth first appeared on LeapRate | Online Trading Industry News, Broker Intelligence & Fintech Analysis.