Plato Partnership Limited (“Plato Partnership”), a not-for-profit company bringing creative solutions and efficiencies to today’s equity marketplace, has signed a collaboration agreement with Trade Informatics PLIA. The PLIA platform in Europe will be renamed PLIAPlato as part of this deal.

As the market approaches MiFID II implementation, the focus on good governance and due process is paramount for market participants. The PLIAPlato collaboration centres on this, with PLIA allowing end users to raise their standards and better understand counterparty risk, which in turn strengthens the best execution process in the market.

The agreement formally grants Plato Partnership’s members optional access to the PLIA platform, a cloud-based counterparty management and compliance solution, and demonstrates further progress in Plato Partnership’s delivery of utility to market participants and its continued focus on market structure simplification.Plato Partnership will work with Trade Informatics to endeavour to enhance the workings of the PLIA platform for the benefit of all market users.

Trade Informatics will formally support the work of Plato Partnership’s MI3 research incubator through a portion of shared revenue ensuring additional research can be undertaken to provide further direction around market structure simplification. Allowing the benefits of the collaboration to reach beyond both members and out to the entire market place, on both the buy and sell side.

Additionally, the arrangement expands the ability of users to streamline the transfer of due diligence information between asset managers and brokers, as well as providing a central repository of questions and responses, audit trail, analysis and regulatory reporting.

Mike Bellaro, Plato Partnership Co-Chair, commented:

“With the requirements of MiFID II and an increasing drive for operational efficiencies, the clear solution for counterparty management is automation and standardisation, both of which are key to reducing costs for end investors. This partnership again demonstrates our commercial focus and constant delivery against what the market needs and we are delighted to have agreed this deal with one of the leading providers to the marketplace.”

Nej D’jelal, Plato Partnership Co-Chair, said:

“As we prepare for a MiFID II environment it is key for the buy side and sell side to have the ability to robustly demonstrate due diligence in the execution process; hence solutions such as PLIA provide a simple and efficient approach to a non-trivial data workflow challenge. Such standardisation simplifies the execution process and contributes to cost reduction, which is in the interests of end investors and a core focus of the Plato Partnership community. This partnership between Plato and PLIA provides another example of Plato Partnership’s drive to deliver utility solutions for the equity marketplace.”

Matt Celebuski,CEO Trade Informatics, (Head of PLIA), commented:

“What Plato Partnership is doing is truly unique, bringing together the world’s largest buy side and sell side firms to address some of the biggest challenges in the market. This dovetails with the Trade Informatics mission to support transparency among market participants and facilitate a frictionless marketplace in which capital flows to its highest and best use. PLIA process management helps streamline the efficiency of counterparty due diligence and facilitates the transfer of information between asset managers and brokers for risk management and best execution policies.”