Germany - The EU-Project FIRST consortium has launched the first running prototype that can extract and analyze sentiment from social media networks in near real-time. As part of the consortium, b-next has been developing technology to monitor market surveillance via social channels.

b-next has worked alongside use case partners Monte dei Paschi, Interactive Data and a number of universities to develop a prototype system that aims to analyze social media sentiment for financial decision support in the fields of market surveillance, reputational risk and retail brokerage. The consortium presented the first version at the ABI Lab conference in Milan.

b-next's team of technologists have built in the functionality to detect scenarios of financial market abuse, such as attempts to manipulate prices of financial instruments via false information release. This development is intended to be the initial step towards enhancing current tools of market supervision and financial market regulation solutions.

Wolfgang Fabisch, CEO b-next, said "This project is about using unstructured information to generate patterns which can further enhance the user's overview of the market. In today's world of rapidly changing and evolving financial markets, the sentiment of market participants can be tremendously valuable to detect and predict financial market events. Recent news has made it clear that colleagues communicate their knowledge and opinion via email, chat rooms and forums. As channels of communication continue to expand it is very possible that sensitive information could also be communicated via social mediums. We are pleased to be engaging with a group of intelligent and innovative professionals on a project which could have significant impact on the banking industry."