Is your IT team overwhelmed keeping your network/cloud safe from sophisticated hackers? Are your C-suite executives struggling to keep regulators and customers satisfied all confidential data and assets are properly protected? Tony Pietrocola, president of Agile1, has devised six proven practices to mitigate the chance your organization will become the next cyberattack headline, forced to […]
NY Court: Goldman’s Morse Can Sue Fidessa for Wrongful Termination
A New York appeals court has just sent a stern warning to Wall Street, fintech and other firms: you can’t fire any of your employees simply because of who they married to or are even romantically involved with. The Appellate Division of New York’s First Department ruled that Christopher Morse, now vice president of electronic […]
Crypto Laundering: AML Regs Tighten
Anti-money laundering managers at banks and other financial institutions need to adapt their customer onboarding and transaction-monitoring approaches to cryptocurrency investors or risk regulatory fines, warn AML experts. Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, already are involved in nearly ten percent of the total US$2 trillion of dirty money that is washed annually. That percentage is […]
Cybersecurity and GDPR: the Budget Battles
Protecting critical data will top the list of challenges chief compliance officers face over the next three years. So will figuring out how to calculate and divide the budget with their IT, risk, finance and operations peers. Chief compliance officers are responsible for protecting their firms from reputational and legal risk. They are accustomed to […]
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, […]
North Korea Sanctions: Tracking the Unknown Cohorts
US President Donald Trump’s order to block any “significant financial transactions” related to North Korea is presenting US financial firms with a rigorous challenge to their anti-money laundering procedures. Trade finance, trade surveillance and other departments will have to dig far deeper into customer identities, business relationships, and transactions to protect their firms from costly […]
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 […]
Unique Product IDs: Can the OTC-ISIN Win the Job?
Can International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs) become the foundation for unique product identifiers (UPIs)? The new Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB) which will allocate ISINs for over-the-counter derivatives, appears to think so. It also thinks that it might be the organization issuing the UPIs, although it is willing to work with others. If such a scenario […]
Corlytics: Can Analytics Reduce Regulatory Risk?
US$7.2 billion. That is what Deutsche Bank paid to the US Department of Justice this year for misleading invstors in the packaging, securitization, marketing, sale and issuance of residential mortgage-backed securities between 2006 and 2007 which contributed to the financial crisis. It might be the highest fine levied so far in 2017, but there will […]
Cybersecurity: Asset Managers Face Ratings Threat
Regulatory fines aren’t the only thing asset managers need to worry about when it comes to ensuring they have a strong cybersecurity program in place. A new study just released by Moody’s Investors Services about the cybersecurity preparedness of US fund management firms suggests that asset managers could face a credit ratings downgrade if they can’t protect their critical data. That data could include anything […]