An investor casts its vote at an annual or other corporate meeting, but has no way of knowing whether it was actually received and counted. It could be rejected or even partially accepted, which defeats the purpose of casting the vote in the first place. While the US Securities and Exchange Commission has left market […]
T+2 in Canada: Affirmations in the Headlights Again
Canada and the US are in lockstep to shorten their settlement cycle from three days to two days on September 5, 2017, but Canada is taking its preparations one step further when it comes to the critical post-trade function of matching trade details. The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), the umbrella organization representing all of Canada’s […]
Cybersecurity and AML: How the Twain Must Meet?
What is the connection between a bank’s cybersecurity breach or event and money laundering? The same criminal. says the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. That’s why FinCEN wants financial firms to include information on cybersecurity events or breaches on their suspicious activity reports (SARs). Doing so will ensure that the financial firm is on […]
Europe’s PRIIPs: When Being Clear Isn’t All That Easy
Fund managers, banks and insurance firms can now breathe a collective sigh of relief, but not for long. The European Commission has just announced that it has postponed by one year the implementation date for new legislation requiring financial firms to more clearly explain the risks and rewards of some investment products that fall under […]
Swing Pricing for US Funds: Has the SEC Gone Far Enough?
Like it or not, fund managers will have to make peace with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new investment company reporting modernization program and liquidity management guidelines. They’re going to have to accept doing more to curb their liquidity risk and disclose more about their investment composition. Oddly, it’s a voluntary aspect of the new SEC […]
AML Compliance: Policing the Money Wires
Bank compliance, technology and back-office executives will soon be faced with a lot more headaches in preventing and reporting possible money laundering and other illegal activities conducted through payments transmitted by European wire transfers. Effective June 2017, financial firms — specifically banks — will have to monitor their wire payment messages more closely and file suspicious […]
SS&C Sued by Hedge Fund for Cyber Heist
Was incompetence, gross negligence, collusion or a good faith mistake the reason operations executives from fund administrator SS&C Technologies authorized the transfer of almost US$6 million from a client’s commodities fund to Chinese hackers? That is the question readers of a lawsuit filed by hedge fund Tillage Commodities Fund against SS&C Technologies will likely be […]
New York Proposed Cyber Rules: Too Much, Too Fast
Cutting down one risk — that of a cybersecuity breach — is promising to add a lot more risk of other kinds. Those would be increased costs and liability. The New York State Department of Financial Services has gone further than its federal peers by mandating hard and fast policies instead of risk-based methodology to […]
Uncleared Swap Deals: Clarity Is Work in Progress
“It’s not that complicated.” Regulators might have thought that setting specific rules for margining uncleared swap transactions would make life easier for financial firms because they will won’t have to negotiate over how, or even whether to collateralize their deals. They couldn’t have been more wrong. So said panelists and attendees at the International Swaps […]
Outsourced Compliance Officers: Red Flag for SEC?
The decision of the US Securities and Exchange Commission to require fund managers to disclose on their Form ADV whether they have outsourced their chief compliance officer role is starting to cause some angst. Asset managers wonder if they will be targeted for additional scrutiny, only because they delegated their regulatory compliance work to an external provider. […]