SAS UK and Detica, the business and technology consultancy, will deliver a new market monitoring system that will assist the FSA to identify and pursue insider dealings and other market misconduct. The new intelligence solution will proactively detect and combat market abuse by analysing trading in a diverse range of financial instruments. It will provide the FSA with intelligence on unusual and potentially unlawful activity on UK markets. By using this new solution, the FSA aims to significantly enhance its capability to fight market abuse.

The FSA requires a holistic approach to market monitoring, which Detica and SAS are able to provide by integrating a range of BI applications into a complete user friendly system. SAS® Enterprise Intelligence Platform has been chosen to form the data integration, BI and analytics part of the solution. SAS was selected on the strength, quality and robustness of its complete platform offering and for its market leading capabilities in analytics. The group has already begun work with the FSA with the final contract spanning over a seven year period.

Simon Asplen-Taylor, Head of Market and Regulatory Services in Detica, comments on Detica's partnership with SAS: "This contract with the FSA is a major opportunity for Detica and is indicative of the way we can combine our expertise in information intelligence with strong capital markets experience and unique intellectual property. As part of this, we rely heavily our on strategic partnerships. SAS is the leading force in data integration, business intelligence and analytics and we felt there was no better choice than SAS for such a significant deal. SAS has been an integral part of winning the FSA contract."

John Dalton, Managing Director of SAS UK and Ireland comments: "The challenges that MiFID presents organisations are widespread and SAS' MiFID offering is gaining increasing interest not only from the UK but also mainland European participants and regulators alike. We are incredibly proud to be working with Detica and the FSA on such a crucial project. Financial Services is SAS' largest industry segment and with over 30 years of experience in the financial services sector, we have no doubt that SAS is in the best possible position to meet and surpass the needs of the FSA."


Separately, Kx Systems, leader in high-performance analytics on streaming and historical data, and Detica, the business and technology consultancy, announced that the Kx kdb+ database will be a core component of Detica's Market Monitoring solution for the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

To increase its capability to combat market abuse the FSA searched for a realtime intelligence system to trap insider trades and identify other illegal activities immediately. The need for realtime surveillance is on the rise as trading becomes more complex and electronic, involving huge volumes of daily transactions. The solution, known as SABRE II, will integrate multiple technologies, with the Kx kdb+ database supplying a high-performance relational database able to support the FSA's requirement of realtime intelligence on multi-terabytes of data.

"The essence of what the FSA asked us to provide them is the ability to deliver market intelligence on volumes of data as quickly as possible," said Simon Asplen-Taylor, Head of Market and Regulatory Services at Detica. "For us, the clear database choice was kdb+. The ability of kdb+ to handle analyses on terabytes of data at realtime speeds is unrivalled - it fit the FSA's needs exactly."

Realtime intelligence requires complex event processing and the ability to compare historical to streaming data on the fly. Kx architected kdb+ for the highest historical database performance, as well as the ability to integrate seamlessly with streaming data. "Kx believes that realtime intelligence requires a full-fledged database in addition to streaming analysis. Without a fast, comprehensive database, the overall architecture will be too slow to deliver adequate speed as data volumes grow," said Kx President Janet Lustgarten. "We are delighted to be working with Detica on a solution that will help the FSA meet its statutory obligation to promote fair markets for all consumers."