Astana International Exchange, Kazakhstan’s stock exchange, has successfully deployed Nasdaq’s SMARTS Market Surveillance system for real-time surveillance and monitoring of market operations functions.
NASDAQ powers the AIFC (Astana International Financial Centre) Exchange since late 2017 with its Matching Engine, the most widely-used matching engine in the world. The Astana International Exchange (AIX) is a regional platform to attract investment to Kazakhstan and the Central Asian Region in order to enable domestic and regional development, through the mobilization of domestic resources and foreign portfolio flows. Formed in 2018 as part of the Astana International Financial Centre, the exchange is owned by AIFC, Goldman Sachs, Shanghai Stock Exchange, the Silk Road Fund and NASDAQ.
“Implementation of the SMARTS surveillance system will ensure market integrity by detecting abnormal trading patterns and provide our clients with a fair, transparent and safe marketplace which is critical to attracting liquidity. We are glad that through our partnership with a recognizable global supplier of technologies for exchanges we continue to build our global standard infrastructure.”Andy Green, Associate Vice President, Market Technology at Nasdaq, said:
“By deploying SMARTS, AIX is underscoring their commitment to providing Kazakhstan and the Central Asia region with blue chip, best-in-class monitoring capabilities leveraged by regulators and exchanges worldwide. As Nur-Sultan continues to develop into a prominent capital markets hub, the need for integrity and keeping its markets safe from financial crime has never been more significant. We look forward to working with AIX in this important endeavor.”The set of SMARTS alerts and reports for surveillance deployed at Astana International Exchange will allow the operator to pro-actively detect abnormal trading patterns (including spoofing, layering, collusion, etc.), and to deter market abuse in all types of assets (equities and fixed income). The solution is also scalable and can easily expand to cover future asset classes as required. Nasdaq’s SMARTS automates the detection, investigation, and analysis of potentially abusive or disorderly trading, to help improve the overall efficiency of the surveillance organisation and reduce cost, even as market complexity and new regulations increase.
