Market operator ICAP acquires fintech firm Abide Financial for an undisclosed sum

ICAP, a provider of post trade risk mitigation services, has taken over Abide Financial, a regulatory FinTech company for an undisclosed sum.

ICAP has made the purchase of Abide Financial through its Euclid incubator scheme for emerging FinTech companies. The acquisition will provide the ICAP with Post Trade Risk and Information (PTRI) division’s client base, along with integrated reporting solutions for entities subject to regulatory regimes in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK and the US. It will also help Abide Solutions to expand its global reach.

Michael Spencer, group CEO at ICAP, said,

Abide is a company with big potential and ambitions, and by capitalising on ICAP’s relationships, knowledge and resources, it can be propelled to the next level in its growth.

Abide Financial, based in Bristol and London, was founded in 2011, as a result of the founders’ desire for a better quality of transaction reporting service than was available. It is now a market leader in the provision of regulatory reporting technology, and ensures that market participants are compliant with evolving reporting obligations. This includes banks, brokerage houses and asset managers. It fulfills this objective by providing compliance software and consultancy solutions.

The company acts as a reporting hub for EMIR, Approved Reporting Mechanism for MiFID and a Regulatory Reporting Mechanism for REMIT. Abide is currently awaiting ESMA’s approval to become a Trade Repository and is developing its MiFiD II offering.

The road ahead looks something like this – Abide Financial is set to become a subsidiary of ICAP’s PTRI division, and its regulatory reporting hub and venues will be integrated with ICAP’s PTRI Approved Publication Arrangement (APA) reporting service. Jenny Knott, CEO of ICAP’s PTRI, said,

The acquisition agreement with Abide is very exciting and enhances our PTRI offering to provide full global coverage of Dodd Frank, EMIR and MiFID II reporting. Increased scrutiny and regulation of the financial services industry has created significant opportunities for us at ICAP to help companies meet new regulatory demands that many do not want to carry out inhouse, primarily because of the cost and manpower involved.