The Nigerian Stock Exchange has gone live with a new market-surveillance platform powered by SMARTS, a solution supplied by Nasdaq.

Tinuade Awe, General Counsel and Head of Regulation, NSE, said in an NSE press release: “As we enter the growth phase of the development of our market, including the introduction of new asset classes such as derivatives, there will be the imperative of processing significant volumes of market information in real-time to detect anomalies. The SMARTS technology, which we have successfully deployed, allows our team to proactively analyze patterns and trends to make sense of the vast amounts of data for investigative purposes and protection of investors, while strengthening the integrity of our market.”

The technology lets the Nigerian bourse proactively monitor market manipulation (including spoofing and layering), detect and deter manipulative tendencies, gather intelligence, carry out monitoring and analysis of traders, conduct multi-asset and cross-market surveillance, and execute risk-based supervision of flagged participants. The new system went live in July.

According to Nasdaq, the SMARTS Surveillance solutions are used at 47 marketplaces, 17 regulators and 140+ market participants across 65 countries and are used by over 3,500 compliance professionals. They have been used for real-time, cross-market, cross-asset surveillance for over 22 years.

Tony Sio, Head of Exchange & Regulator Surveillance, Market Technology at Nasdaq, said: “SMARTS performs universal surveillance of all asset classes and provides a strong platform for NSE to develop new products such as derivatives. We look forward to a long partnership with the NSE as the Nigerian markets evolve.”