If fund managers can outsource middle and back-office operations and even trading desks, why can’t global custodians outsource network management due diligence and monitoring? That’s the question over a dozen former global custody network managers who spoke with FinOps Report over the past month are asking as concerns mount that the COVID-19 pandemic could eventually […]
EU’s New Shareholder Rights Directive: What Standards?
With Europe’s second incarnation of the Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II) less than four months away, the securities industry can easily rely on automated communication channels to ease the compliance burden, but using disparate message standards to transmit data and various methodologies for calculating fees will still make the administrative work challenging. The European Commission […]
Fair or Not: Fund Managers Face SEC’s New Valuation Rule
Registered investment advisers might find it operationally a lot harder and a lot more expensive to value hard-to-price assets held by mutual funds if the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed modernization of fund valuation practices is adopted. Appointing a chief valuation officer could become necessary to handle the laundry list of new requirements. The […]
OCC’s DLT for Sec Finance: Broker Reconciliations Gone?
Securities finance operations managers at US broker-dealers clearing their securities loan deals through the Options Clearing Corp. (OCC) could soon reduce if not eliminate time-consuming manual reconciliation work thanks to its new distributed ledger technology-based platform. Once OCC’s new DLT-based securities finance infrastructure is up and running, its 72 broker-dealer users would have real-time access […]
Coronavirus :The Corporate Actions Side Effect
Corporate actions analysts and operations managers working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic could unintentionally end up leaving money on the table as they scramble to deal with companies either postponing some events or changing the terms of others. That’s what Jonny Ruck, chief executive officer at London- headquartered corporate actions analytics technology firm Scorpeo is […]
COVID-19: Addressing Return to Work Legal Quirks
The eventual return of Wall Street’s trading and operations executives to their physical offices as the coronavirus pandemic subsides could end up being a cause for litigation and employee angst, rather than celebration, if C-suite executives don’t carefully balance profit-making with worker safety. Knowing when employees can come back to work is the easiest part […]
SEI Sues SS&C For Threatening to Shut Advent/Moxy Access
Fund administrator SEI Global Services has sued rival SS&C Technology Holdings and subsidiary SS&C Advent for allegedly trying to put SEI out of business by cutting off its access to critical portfolio accounting technology SEI needs to service its fund manager clients. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court in the SEI’s backyard in […]
CSDR: Partial Settlement Means a Full Ops Headache
In permitting partial settlement of securiies transactions to relieve financial penalties, the new European Central Securities Depository Regulation (CSDR) will unintentionally cause fund managers, broker-dealers and others more operational grief. The CSDR is designed to harmonize the operating rules for all national European securities depositories, including using the same methodology to calculate fines when trades […]
Coronavirus: Survival Tips for Middle Office Fund Ops
The coronavirus pandemic is frazzling even the best trained middle-office operations managers of US fund management shops who are working in the trenches of a battlezone. The war isn’t about setting up remote access to IT systems for employees having to work from home or deciding who should do which task and when. Following a […]
BNY Mellon Gives Fund Managers New NAV Agent
Fund managers no longer have to rely on their fund administrator’s backup plan or their own when striking or validating a net asset value. BNY Mellon, the world’s largest custodian bank, says it can save the day by doing all the operational work using Milestone Group’s pControl platform which also allows for accurate backup NAVs […]