Finance, Banking & Insurance

Vancouver, BC – October 03, 2026 -- Two independent research firms diverge on the size of the global online trading platform market, with Mordor Intelligence valuing it at $11.65 billion in 2025 and projecting $18.18 billion by 2031 (7.66% CAGR), while Fortune Business Insights puts 2025 value at $10.82 billion, rising to $18.50 billion by 2034 (6.00% CAGR). Mordor Intelligence attributes 69.59% of 2025 platform volume to retail investors and 63.42% of deployment to cloud-based infrastructure, underscoring smartphones as the primary entry point for individual traders.

Seattle – October 03, 2026 -- ORSNN, an electronic trading platform for institutional whole loan markets, has named Aaron Khoo as Chief Product Officer and Werner Koepf as Chief Technology Officer, while adding Ken Plank as Senior Advisor, Credit Unions, as the company nears completion of a new capital raise.

The platform has supported $3 billion in loan offering volume to date and completed its SOC 2 Type I examination in the second quarter of 2026. The capital raise will fund continued product development, engineering execution and expansion into new markets, the company said.

Chicago – October 03, 2026 -- CME Group has withdrawn its regulatory filing to launch a 10-Barrel Crude Oil futures contract designed for round-the-clock trading, citing unresolved concerns from industry participants over unintended market risk.

CME Group abandons bid to counter unregulated 24/7 oil trading venues

The exchange operator had proposed the small-denomination contract as a transparent, CFTC-regulated alternative to 24/7 energy products already trading on other platforms, including onshore prediction markets and offshore perpetual futures. CME Group Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy said these existing products target retail participants and operate around the clock despite offshore perpetuals being illegal for U.S. participants, who nonetheless access them via virtual private networks.

Scottsdale, Ariz. – October 02, 2026 -- equipifi has grown BNPL transaction volume on its platform by 128% year over year while nearly doubling its headcount following a Series B raise earlier this year.

equipifi earns fourth consecutive Best Places to Work finalist nod

equipifi, a bank-led Buy Now, Pay Later provider, has been named a finalist for the Phoenix Business Journal's Best Places to Work in the Valley for the fourth consecutive year. The company placed second in the Extra Small category last year and will compete in a larger size category next year due to its rapid growth.

San Francisco – – October 02, 2026 -- GoodLeap, LLC has closed a $434 million securitization backed solely by home improvement loans it originated, marking the sixth such issuance for the fintech lender.

GoodLeap Home Improvement Solutions Trust 2026-2 secures $434 million in principal balance

The transaction, GoodLeap Home Improvement Solutions Trust 2026-2, was sponsored by Bank of America, N.A., with BofA Securities, Inc. acting as sole structuring agent. Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Fitch Ratings both rated the securitization. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, CIBC World Markets Corp., and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. served as joint bookrunners.

Chicago – October 02, 2026 -- Setara Financial Corp. has advanced development of its Reference Layer, a benchmark and reference-data infrastructure designed to bring standardized measurement to the fragmented global compute market.

Compute market data remains scattered across hardware, providers and geographies

As artificial intelligence drives investment in GPUs, data centers, power and connectivity, compute has become a critical economic input, yet pricing and performance information remains fragmented across disconnected proprietary data sets. Setara's architecture starts with a governed data model built to standardize heterogeneous compute-market information before it enters benchmark calculation.

Stamford, Connecticut – October 02, 2026 -- Steward Partners placed three senior executives as finalists in the 2026 Wealth Management Industry Awards, drawing national attention across leadership, compliance and M&A categories in a single cycle.

Three executives earn simultaneous finalist status across distinct disciplines

CEO Jim Gold was named a finalist for CEO of the Year among firms managing more than $25 billion in assets. Chief Compliance Officer Rob Guldner was recognized as a finalist for CCO of the Year, while Scott Danner earned a finalist nod for M&A Leader of the Year.

San Diego – – October 02, 2026 -- A national survey of 5,000 U.S. adults has found that Americans rate a family birthday party as a more awkward setting for discussing inheritance than a funeral, upending assumptions about when families confront estate planning. Trust & Will's 2026 Death & Inheritance Report found 63% of respondents call a birthday the most awkward occasion for the conversation, compared with 41% for a funeral or wake and just 32% for an ordinary phone call.

Christmas ranks as both the top trigger and the top occasion families avoid

Christmas is the most common holiday prompt for inheritance discussions, cited by 16% of respondents, yet it is simultaneously the occasion Americans most actively avoid for the same topic, at 37% -- more than double any other occasion and the top avoidance answer in all 50 states.

Las Vegas – October 02, 2026 -- Rareview Capital LLC has launched the Rareview Bloomberg Commodity Index ETF, trading under the symbol BCOM, offering passive exposure to the Bloomberg Commodity Index Total Return.

Fund tracks 24 futures contracts across 22 commodities as of April 30, 2026

The ETF is weighted two-thirds by trading volume or liquidity and one-third by world production or global economic significance. Weight caps limit any single commodity to 15% and any sector to 33%, capping concentration risk across energy, metals, agriculture and livestock.

Miami – October 02, 2026 -- Nuix used Sibos 2026 to position its Nuix Neo platform as a tool for financial institutions to convert unstructured data into usable financial crime intelligence, citing that up to 90% of enterprise data remains unreadable by conventional systems.

Nuix Neo processes over 1,000 file types to surface hidden risk signals

The platform's patented processing engine extracts information from emails, chat logs, counterparty data, transaction records, case files and voice recordings at a binary level. Deterministic natural language processing classifies and risk-scores the data, while semantic search surfaces relevant documents across languages based on meaning rather than keywords alone.

"AI is only as good as the data beneath it, and in complex financial crime investigations seeing and connecting all evidence is critical," said Chris Stephenson, Head of Industry Advocacy at Nuix.