The professional services firm EY has formed an alliance with Aaru, a two-year-old artificial intelligence startup, to put behavioural simulation at the centre of how financial services firms test strategy. For banks, insurers and wealth managers, the practical promise is blunt: model how a defined population of customers or investors would react to a pricing change, a marketing message or a merger before committing capital, and get an answer in hours rather than the weeks or

Trading Technologies has acquired TRAFiX, the equities and equity options order and execution management specialist, buying its way into the one major asset class its platform did not cover and squaring up against multi-asset incumbents such as Bloomberg, ION Group and BlackRock's Aladdin. The deal closed on 30 September and hands an exit to Marlin Equity Partners, the private equity firm that took a growth stake in TRAFiX in 2023. Terms were not disclosed. For the Chicago-ba

Between an FIS platform launch, a Juniper Research forecast of $617bn, and a Cape Town summit rewriting the inclusion playbook, beyond banking has finally stopped being a marketing phrase.

RBC Capital Markets can now clear and settle energy and commodity trades on behalf of other market participants after European Commodity Clearing (ECC) granted it General Clearing Member status, a licence that moves the Canadian bank from a user of Europe's cleared commodity markets to a provider of access to them. The step deepens RBC's push into European energy and commodity clearing at a point when the region's carbon market is set to widen and when specialist firms, rathe

Fresh money, a live European supervisor selection, and a governed-AI arms race just turned compliance from cost centre into strategic infrastructure. If you still think RegTech is where fintech goes to file quiet vendor reviews, this week's news suggests it might be time for a re-read. Fresh capital landed, a new European supervisor moved a step closer to reality, and the largest incumbents pushed governed agentic AI into KYC, AML and client lifecycle management. The complian

Riyadh-based OORI has agreed a partnership with women's leadership platform Playbook to deliver private-market investment education to female leaders across the Gulf, giving the young, regulated platform direct access to a ready-made pool of prospective women investors. The tie-up was announced at the Women Shaping Wealth Summit in Riyadh on 28 and 29 September 2026, where OORI acted as a Learning Partner. For finance professionals, the notable angle is distribution. A CMA-li