When it comes to investing in cryptofunds, institutional investors will need to be extra cautious deciphering the trading and operational risks involved. Knowing what to ask cryptofund managers won’t be as hard for institutional investors as understanding the answers they receive. “Even the savviest institutional investors might not be knowledgeable in the intricacies of the […]
Custody: Unchartered Waters for Digital Assets
Qualified custodian. That’s a term that compliance and operations managers at registered investment fund advisors, not to mention the US Securities and Exchange Commission, are now grappling with, when it comes to the safekeeping of digital assets. The reason is two-fold. For starters, it is unclear whether the SEC’s custody rule for RIAs investing in […]
Striking an NAV: Fund Managers’ Contingency Options
(Editor’s Update on December 5, 2018: US fund managers are getting serious about striking back-up NAVs on their own. Milestone Group tells FinOps Report that it has nabbed two top-tier US headuartered fund managers to use its pControl Oversight platform to monitor their fund administrators and to strike back-up NAVs in-house, instead of relying on […]
SEC 12b-1 Fee Amnesty: Costly Ops Work
A, B, C. Those three simple letters of the English alphabet could cause plenty of administrative grief for compliance and middle office operations managers at US mutual fund management firms over the next few months. That is, if they hope to take advantage of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s leniency program on overcharges to investors in […]
SEC to Fund Admins: No Proof, No NAV
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has just warned fund administrators they can’t take the word of a fund manager when calculating the net asset value (NAV) of an investment fund. When explaining its recent US$561,000 fine against Gemini Fund Services, the US regulatory agency says that when assigning an NAV to a mutual fund, […]
Central Clearing for US Treasuries: Pipedream or Reality?
The have and have-nots. That is how operations and compliance executives at some fund management firms speak about the bifurcated system for how trades in US Treasuries clear. Fund managers tell FinOps Report they want a level playing field with broker-dealers. That means that buy-side trades in US Treasuries, such as bills, notes and bonds, […]
EU’s SRD: Reworking Proxy Services
Custodian bank operations managers should start planning to get their hands a lot dirtier in the proxy plumbing process. The new version of the European Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD) calls for them to respond to European issuer requests for identifying investors who hold more than 0.5 percent of a company’s stock, to forward proxy information […]
Can Blockchain Supercharge Syndicated Loans?
Editor’s Update (4/26/2018): Finastra announced on April 24 that its Fusion LenderComm platform was commercially available, as an app on R3s Corda platform. Agent banks in the syndicated loan market can publish lender-specific deal positions on the ledger eliminating the need for lenders to query their agent banks about transaction history by phone, fax or […]
Global Network Management: Are My Assets Safe?
Global network managers of custodian banks are redefining the word relationship when it comes to monitoring local agent banks that safekeep assets of underlying clients in multiple countries. It is no longer enough to make a sporadic visit or have a phone call. Global network managers have become detectives sifting through mounts of data to […]
Artificial Intelligence: Do Risk Managers Get It?
When it comes to artificial intelligence, investment analysts, customer service managers and compliance managers seem to agree that the technology can help them make informed decisions more quickly and reduce investment, credit and regulatory risk. What about risk managers? They don’t understand how to incorporate AI into their risk metrics or participate in the decision-making […]