Mosaic Smart Data and ESA Business Applications, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial arm, have announced an alliance to advance the data analytics tools available to banks in the fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) markets.

In this ground-breaking collaboration between the space exploration and fintech industries, Mosaic will explore the potential for applying machine-learning models developed and used by ESA in Space Systems to financial markets. Mosaic will also further develop and share the algorithms with ESA for its own use.

The project will focus on data models used to identify patterns and correlations that are used by ESA for investigating anomalies of deep space satellite missions.

In financial markets, this technology may be highly effective in automatically identifying and creating hedging strategy recommendations, as well as giving sales and trading teams a much better indication of the market factors impacting their performance.

These models may also have applications in market surveillance by quickly identifying and flagging suspect trades and behaviour which may subtly fall outside a trader’s typical behaviour patterns.

In the initial phase of the collaboration, brought about through ESA Business Applications’ zero-equity programme, Mosaic will complete a joint-funded feasibility study to explore how ESA’s machine learning technology can benefit financial market participants. If successful, the technology will be built into Mosaic’s suite of analytics models.

Matthew Hodgson, CEO of Mosaic Smart Data, said: “From fighting climate change to improving financial market surveillance, data analytics technology has the potential to radically reshape the way we approach challenges in many different industries. Through this collaboration we have an incredible opportunity to apply some of the world’s most advanced data analytics models to the problems our clients face in financial markets. Not only that, but we will also be sharing the results of this project with the European Space Agency to help advance their analytics development.  Our aim is to positively contribute back to the wider community.”

Elia Montanari from the European Space Agency, said: “At the heart of ESA Business Applications is the aim of nurturing Europe’s most vibrant ventures that leverage space expertise and technology. This is a fascinating opportunity to look at how approaching data science problems in very different arenas – financial markets and space exploration – can lead to new, shared developments.”