To investigate the extent to which technology is disrupting the financial services sector, KPMG recently partnered with the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) and the Managed Funds Association (MFA) to determine how managers are responding. 

Source has launched Europe’s first UCITS ETF focused solely on financial technology (fintech) companies. The company writes that fintech is one of the biggest growth stories of the century so far but, until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to get broad exposure.

ifund and fundinfo have launched Digital-Advisor, a cloud-based system for fund selection.

Euronext has selected Strategic Insight’s LiquidMetrix as the best execution analytics platform for its equity, ETF and derivatives products.

Third Financial Software has enjoyed another record year of growth, reports chief executive Stewart Foster, (pictured) and has almost doubled in size. Founded in 2008, Third Financial has gone from simple software to offering a software platform business and is now looking at the direct to consumer market. 

Big changes are afoot across a broad spectrum of the financial services industry. For example, in the wealth management and investment advisory space, thanks to huge technological developments in recent years, traditional wealth managers have a new competitor to face; the robo adviser, which sounds exciting but it is less the Terminator and more machine learning software, using algorithms to learn investor behaviour and automatically invest into portfolios based on clients' goals and risk threshold. 

Euronext has expanded its Spotlight options offering with new options on Flow Traders NV (FLW), a technology-enabled liquidity provider that specialises in exchange traded products (ETPs). 

Guggenheim Investments has introduced an online resource to help advisors and investors use the firm’s BulletShares ETFs to build a more efficient laddering strategy consisting of investment-grade and high-yield ETFs with varying terms to maturity.

The ETF Store has launched a new online investment service offering, iPortfolios, providing investors with The ETF Store’s exchange-traded fund portfolios through a fully-automated online investment platform.

Koris International has launched TrackInsight, the first platform providing analyses on the replication quality of European exchange-traded funds for institutional investors.