SMARTS.broker will provide the Broker with a comprehensive suite of monitoring and alert services to assist the firm with their surveillance and compliance requirements.

CSSS is a joint venture between two leading financial services groups and is based in South Africa. The deal provides surveillance coverage of all products traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

"We are delighted that one of South Africa's leading financial ventures has decided to partner with SMARTS for their market surveillance system requirements. CSSS is now able to call on over 15 years of experience of SMARTS to deliver to their organization the most advanced surveillance solution available today," said Dr Andreas Furche, CEO of SMARTS Group.

With SMARTS.broker CSSS has put in place a trade surveillance platform which will substantially reduce the regulatory and financial risk associated with clients or traders engaging in market abuse. The SMARTS.broker trade surveillance service provides real-time alerts identifying trading patterns associated with market manipulation, including Wash Trades, Marking the Close, and Layering of Orders, as well as other forms of market abuse and regulatory breaches, front-running, and trading information reports. Furthermore, SMARTS.broker provides users with access to historic trading data for all listed securities, and a number of graphical tools to assist the user to interrogate the alerts and data. These include a market replay function which allows users to re-create the full order book for a security at any point in time on a trading day.

"Our team of highly trained experts behind SMARTS.broker are continually evolving the system to stay ahead of the most complex trading strategies. The advantage of a managed service is the ability for the development and hosting costs which broking firms would normally individually incur to be shared across SMARTS customers. Furthermore, SMARTS.broker customers gain access to the most advanced hub of market surveillance expertise to ensure that their market surveillance and compliance is global best practice," concluded Dr Furche.

"The appeal of the SMARTS.broker solution is its advanced alert engine, user friendly interface and the ability for the system to detect the most subtle of trading irregularities. SMARTS demonstrated that they understood what we required and are able to deliver a solution with no hardware or software requirements from our end. This suited our requirements of obtaining a comprehensive surveillance system which can be set up quickly and which requires little or no IT resources on our side to run or maintain," said Yushavia Naidoo from CSSS.

The agreement resulted from CSSS taking advantage of the SMARTS.broker one month free trial period in which CSSS were able, at no cost, to evaluate the nature of the alerts and functionality of SMARTS.broker.