The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is upping its requirements of ESG funds in a bid to clamp down on greenwashing and the risk of mis-selling.

Last week, the regulator approved a host of new measures for ESG funds, including requiring them to invest at least 65% of listed entity AUM in companies that meet its new disclosure requirements.

These new disclosure requirements form what the regulator is called BRSR Core, updates to the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report regime introduced in 2021, and apply to the top 150 listed companies from 1 April this year. They will be gradually rolled out to the top 1,000 listed companies by March 2027.

In addition, supply chain ESG disclosure is required from the top 250 listed companies on a comply or explain basis from April 2024.

As well as investing in companies “where assurance on BRSR Core is undertaken”, ESG funds must also disclose their ESG voting decisions, fund manager commentary and case studies on how their ESG strategy is applied.

At the moment, mutual funds can only have one ESG scheme, but the new measures also include the ability to launch multiple schemes based on ESG-related factors.

Further to these rules, Sebi is looking to regulate ESG ratings agencies, who will be required to consider ESG factors and provide a “core ESG rating” based on the BRSR Core guidelines.

It has also approved a framework for rating providers, which requires them to provide more transparency over their ESG ratings, uses assured data and includes transition finance. It is aimed at reducing the conflict of interests between ratings providers.

Global post-trade services provider Clearstream has created a new bank in Luxembourg dedicated to serving institutional fund investors.

Clearstream Fund Centre S.A. will operate under a commercial banking licence in Luxembourg and will be interlinked with Clearstream’s international central securities depository (ICSD) and central securities depository (CSD) businesses.

It will serve Clearstream’s fund execution business Vestima, providing access to more than 230,000 funds in over 50 markets.

Vestima provides order execution, settlement and custody services and holds a commercial banking licence via Clearstream Fund Centre S.A..

The new bank will also be regulated under MiFID to support clients to fulfil regulatory fund requirements.

Philippe Seyll, CEO of Clearstream Fund Centre S.A., says: “It is at the heart of Clearstream’s mission to support the wealth management and banking community with best-in-class execution services, efficient distribution management, state-of-the-art technology and data solutions.

“The creation of Clearstream Fund Centre S.A. is a strong testimonial to our client dedication as well as to Luxembourg as our home and an important financial centre.”

Institutional-grade digital assets trading venue GFO-X has entered into a strategic partnership with LSEG’s LCH SA to launch the UK’s first centrally cleared trading venue for derivatives in this space.

At launch, GFO-X will offer trading in cash-settled BTC index futures and options. The pair will provide clearing on cash-settled digital asset index derivatives.

According to GFO-X, the firm will be taking the first steps to extract efficiencies from new technologies within a traditional market structure, with the goal of delivering 24/7 trading to global regulated digital asset markets.

The launch is currently scheduled for Q4 2023, subject to completion of LCH SA regulatory approvals.

“Bitcoin index futures and options are a rapidly growing asset class, with increasing interest among institutional market participants looking for access within a regulated environment they are familiar with,” said Frank Soussan, head of LCH DigitalAssetClear.

“Offering centralised clearing for these cash-settled dollar-denominated crypto derivatives contracts on GFO-X is an important development for the market.”

GFO-X and LCH SA stated that they have been working with an advisory group comprising investment banks, trading firms and liquidity providers to optimise product design and risk methodologies.

“Recent market events in the trading of digital assets have highlighted the need for a safe, regulated venue where large financial institutions can trade at scale, while keeping their clients’ assets protected,” said Arnab Sen, chief executive and co-founder of GFO-X.

“As the UK’s first regulated and centrally cleared trading venue focused entirely on digital asset futures and options, our joint vision is to ensure digital asset derivatives’ trading and clearing requirements and growing demand can be met within a secure, highly regulated environment.”

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has released a report detailing its approach to achieve greater convergence in cyber incident reporting.

The release of the report follows a request from the G20 and also comes in response to growing rates of cyber incidents.

Three initiatives were outlined by the FSB. Firstly, recommendations must be set up to address issues currently preventing reporting harmonisation. These recommendations will then be adopted by financial institutions in line with their existing business, legal and regulatory frameworks.

The Board also highlights the need for an enhancement of the Cyber Lexicon. Including cyber incident reporting terms will help to standardise communications through a ‘common language’.

Finally, common types of information submitted by financial institutions to authorities as part of cyber incident reports need to be identified. By gathering this data, a common format for incident reporting exchange can be established and financial institutions will be able to share incident information.

Today Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR) announced the launch of a trading solution that enables clients to achieve increased straight-through processing and efficiency, better trading decisions and client insights, improved controls, and reduced risk. The new solution will enable clients of Broadridge Trading and Connectivity Solutions to achieve greater agility and faster time to market, improved scalability, and reduced fragmentation of interfaces and tech costs.

The new Broadridge offering is built with a standard foundational integration solution across its front, middle and back-office capabilities for trade processing, which leverages an enterprise integration layer and common data model that can be used across the Broadridge product portfolio as well as with third party applications.

“Broadridge’s new solution marks a significant evolution in trading technology infrastructure,” said Justin Llewellyn-Jones, Broadridge Head of Capital Market Product Strategy. “Currently, firms have several front, middle, and back-office systems that are typically integrated using numerous point-to-point connections each with their own data model, creating fragmentation and complexity. By using our unique ability to look across front, middle, and back as a whole, we are helping our clients solve pain points through trade lifecycle simplification. By utilizing our pre-integrated offering to simplify across the trade lifecycle, firms can simultaneously reduce risk, increase efficiency, enhance business growth and reduce costs by an estimated 20–30% in key areas.”

Capital Markets firms face a challenging environment, with economic and geopolitical uncertainty. In addition, regulatory pressures will continue with the shift towards shortened settlement cycles. As a result, it is critical for firms to focus on simplification and innovation across the trade lifecycle to reduce risk and cost of change, while enabling greater business agility. Broadridge’s integrated front, middle, and back offering enables these benefits through features such as a common data model, normalized data sources, business insights for the front-office using post-trade data, integrated reporting, a global, multi-asset middle office and a single point of trade capture and management.