Will T2S launch as scheduled? Nine years after the European Central Bank proposed the initially controversial idea of launching a single centralized settlement platform for domestic and cross-border European securities transactions, the plans to launch might have hit a snag. It wouldn’t be the first time, but this time it would be at the 11th […]
Unbundling Commissions from Research: Big Pain, but Any Gain?
Customers are supposed to understand and agree on exactly what they are paying for. Right. It sounds like a truism, but it isn’t always true. Deals may contain perks or incentives that are never explicitly detailed in the agreement. If they suddenly have to be spelled out and agreed upon, item by item with the […]
Crime Prevention: Breaching the Veil of Omnibus Accounts
For operations and compliance professionals, the definition of financial crime is rapidly expanding to meet the threats of cyber crime, but the more common threat is money laundering or fraudulent wire transfers conducted by unscrupulous companies or individuals. For depositories and custodian banks, this traditional abuse of the financial system has acquired an additional level of […]
Tracking Beneficial Ownership: Finding Those Needles Can Hurt Plenty
For financial institutions finding the beneficial owners of the companies they do business with isn’t like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s even worse. “It is more like looking for a needle in a stack of needles,” says Debra Geister, manager of Navigator Consulting Group, a St. Cloud, Minnesota-based regulatory compliance and operations […]
News to Use: Omgeo, SEI, and Broadridge
Custodians on Alert: Custodians and prime brokers will be able for the first time to input standing settlement instructions (SSIs) to Omgeo’s ALERT database, potentially reducing the number of trades which fail to settle on time. SSIs refer to the last leg of the post-trade communications process when asset managers tell their custodians or prime […]
KYC Utilities: How Many is Too Many?
When is four too high a number? When it is the number of virtually interchangeable third-party services specializing in helping financial firms meet their know-your customer and other regulatory requirements, acknowledge fund managers and even the providers themselves. Of course, just how many should be left standing and who that should be is a difficult question […]
News to Use: Whistleblower Update, Lending vs. Voting, and New TA Utility
SEC Chills Pre-taliation: The Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement of rules against whistleblower retaliation has just taken another giant step forward with the US regulatory agency’s first announcement it has penalized a firm for restrictive language in an employment agreement. Although the US$130,000 fine was against KBR Inc., not a financial services firm, attorneys specializing […]
Fund Managers: Fixing EMIR Reporting Glitches
Now that more than a year has passed since they’ve had to deal with new reporting requirements under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), fund managers are belatedly waking up to the fact they could soon face whopping regulatory fines for not submitting correct data on their derivative transactions to accredited trade repositories. Regulatory operations […]
US Mutual Funds Call for New Rules For “Lost” Investors
Investors of US mutual funds have long relished the benefits the investment vehicles provide: asset diversification, compounding and quick liquidity. Small investors gain the expertise of top portfolio managers, that would otherwise be available only to wealthy and institutional investors. But what investors may not know is that their mutual funds are legally required to […]
Common Tax Reporting Standards: The Tower of Babel
When US lawmakers decided to force foreign financial institutions to ante up the names of all their customers and investors that might owe unpaid US taxes, maybe they knew that they were burdening these financial firms with a complex and costly reporting burden. But who could have foreseen that they were launching a global fad among tax […]