Asset managers and broker-dealers will have to revamp some of their relationship terms, as well as those with the underlying investors, to meet the pending margin requirements for to-be-announced (TBA) transactions and other forward-settling fixed-income transactions. Panelists and attendees at a recent afternoon conference held by the Securities Industry and Financial Market Association about the Financial Industry […]
Catching an Insider Data Thief
Ten percent of employees will never commit a crime, ten percent of employees will, while 80 percent will only do so if the opportunity arises, predict fraud experts. It is that opportunity which asset management firms need to prevent through a combination of compliance controls and technology, say panelists and attendees at a recent symposium […]
Asset Managers Attack Data Silos with Governance
Data governance isn’t just for megabanks anymore. Asset managers are gradually joining the crowd of believers, creating rulebooks for how data quality is ensured enterprisewide with business lines at the helm. That was the consensus of panelists and attendees at a TSAM North America fund management operations event last month where data management took center stage […]
Depository Reforms Russian Corporate Actions Risk
Sketchy information on annual meeting agendas or corporate actions announcements is not going to plague investors in Russia equities in the future. Nor will fund managers risk losing money as many do today, because the operational difficulties discourage them from participating. Russia’s corporate actions reform has given the country’s national securities depository National Settlement Depository (NSD) the […]
Transfer Agents, DTC Still Chilly On Issuer Freeze Policies (Updated)
(Editor’s note: On December 6, 2016 the SEC finally published its acceptance of DTC’s rule changes affecting how it will impose chills and locks on US corporate issuers. The agency’s decision marks the end of a contentious debate between DTC, issuers and their transfer agents. Still, reservations remain. “The vast majority of the new rules […]
Asset Owners Put Managers on the Operational Hotseat
How do you run your business? If it sounds like an open-ended question for pension plans, endowments and other institutional investors to ask fund managers, it is intended to be. Institutional asset owners hope it will elicit a lengthy discussion over the policies, procedures and technology the fund manager uses to make money before they […]
Fund Operations Managers Weather UK’s Brexit Storm
While the UK and European Union leaders will have two years to come up with a gameplan for how the UK will separate from the European Union, middle and back-office operations professionals at fund management shops are taking it one day at a time during extreme market volatility. The UK’s legal limbo has caused higher trading […]
AML De-Risking: Regulators Warn No Big Brooms
Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are putting banks in a Catch-22 of established regulatory penalties for serving financial criminals while simultaneously warning them that cleaning house by category will attract their attention. Recent announcements by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) suggest that banks better […]
SEC to Fund Administrators: You Are Liable for Client Fraud (Updated)
(Editor’s Note: On July 25, 2016 Apex Fund Services announced two hires for compliance. It appointed Nitin Khanapurkar as global head of risk and compliance oversight. Apex’s Luxembourg unit tapped Sonja-Maria Hilkhuijsen as head of European compliance and data protection. Khanapurkar was previously senior partner at KPMG while Hilkhuijsen was chief compliance and data protection […]
Hedge Funds to Prime Brokers: Getting to Yes
Once in the catbird’s seat when picking prime brokers, hedge fund managers are now faced with doing their own sales jobs. They have to persuade prime brokers to accept them as clients with expectations that align. With prime brokers becoming far more selective, hedge fund managers might not get their first choice of prime brokers or […]