Bank of America Merrill Lynch (Baml) and Morgan Stanley have teamed up with Navian Capital, a distributor of financial products, to launch Luma Financial Technologies, a multi-issuer electronic platform for structured products and annuities of which the three firms will be co-investors.

Luma is the 'next evolution' of Navian Capital's online platform that was developed to provide banks and broker/dealers with a click and trade platform and order entry system. Navian already offered structures from many national issuers such as JP Morgan, HSBC, Barclays, Bank of the West, BNP, Citi, and Wells Fargo for third-party distribution, and variable annuities from several carriers including Reliance Standard, The Standard, Voya, Genworth, Great American, Forethought, and Security Benefit.

Luma will 'further improve upon and extend market-leading capabilities in workflow automation, post-trade position monitoring, and comprehensive education, training and compliance management', according to Tim Bonacci (pictured), president and CEO of Luma. The platform will now be available to any distributor in the US.

Bonacci said that Navian has been working for some time on this initiative "to broaden the use of our Atlas platform" and has incorporated cross product comparison tools for market-linked CDs, market-linked notes, structured annuities, and market linked unit investment trusts (UITs) "as several product types are starting to look more and more similar".

The launch also brings new competition to the platforms' market in the US which has already a number of operating outfits including Halo Investments, TPT (a spin-off from Wallstreetdocs), and Simon Markets - formerly Structured Investment Marketplace and Online Network (Simon), the Goldman Sachs platform which is also a spin-off.

Nikki Tippins and Henry Flowers, managing directors at Morgan Stanley and Baml, respectively, pointed that by optimizing and simplifying how structured products and annuities are created, distributed and managed over the entire lifecycle for their clients, will bring 'greater efficiency and transparency to the marketplace'.

The launch comes on the heels of recent reports suggesting that Goldman Sachs had finally offloaded its Simon platform. The US investment bank has reportedly agreed to sell a majority stake in the multi-issuer platform, which will continue operating as an independent firm.

The US Financial Regulatory Authority's (Finra) register shows that Simon Markets is registered as a limited liability company since August 2017. Jason Broder, head of the private investor products group at Goldman Sachs Securities Division; Timur Kocaoglu, head of equity derivatives and structured products sales; and Edward Dominguez, vice president and cross asset compliance officer, appear as chief executive officer, chief operating officer and chief compliance officer of Simon Markets, respectively.

Goldman launched Simon in 2013 to provide a multi-dealer structured note issuing platform targeted at retail broker dealers in the US market.

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