Fund management and custodian operations and legal experts are warning the US Securities and Exchange Commission that its proposed changes to its custody rule, which requires registered investment advisers to select a qualified custodian to safeguard their assets, are far too impractical and costly. “The new proposed rule is contrary to existing business practice and […]
T+1: Fund Managers Tackle Pain Points
Operations directors at fund management firms are starting to review post-trade communications, securities lending, liquidity management, and corporate actions as the critical processes keeping them awake at night when preparing for a one-day settlement cycle (T+1) for US securities in May 2024. Analyzing internal workflow and interactions with broker-dealers and custodian banks is essential to […]
Europe’s CSDR: Fund Managers Monitor Settlement Fails
Operations managers at fund management firms are scrambling to improve how they monitor settlement fails and prevent penalties imposed by their custodian banks just around the corner as mandated under Europe’s Central Securities Depository Regulation (CSDR). A dozen European fund management firms,who spoke with FinOps Report on condition of anonymity, say they are spending more […]
Preventing Pesky US Treasury Settlement Fails
For US broker-dealer operations managers failing to settle a transaction in US Treasury securities might never have been all that problematic, but with the number of fails rising dramatically during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic one megabank–BNY Mellon– has decided to offer a preventative service in a technology partnership with Google Cloud. As the […]
COVID 19: Custody Network Management Revisited
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 […]
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 […]
Goodbye NSCC: Hello Paxos for Clearing US Equities?
US clearinghouses, such as the National Securities Clearing Corp. (NSCC), could become either a thing of the past or take a backseat, if custodian Paxos has its way in clearing and settling US securities. The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent no-action letter to Paxos allows the firm to serve as a clearinghouse for a […]
Unique Product IDs: Next Challenge for Swaps Reporting
Data operations, trade desk and regulatory reporting managers may soon have gear up for new administrative tasks — and potentially extra fees– when reporting their over-the-counter derivatives transactions to trade repositories using unique product identifiers. The UPIs mark the latest in an array of codes financial firms and trading platforms must use to describe the […]
Treasury Operations: From Basics to Optimal
Where are my cash and securities and am I achieving the best bang for the buck? Treasury management staffers at hedge fund management shops are belatedly realizing that the difference between either knowing or not knowing the answer to the interrelated questions could translate into the difference between average and higher investment performance. The savviest […]
Europe’s CSDR: New Settlement Fines, New Ops Strains
Operations, technology, legal and network managers at custodian banks and broker-dealers are starting to feel penalized when it comes to all the data collection, reconciliation and numbers crunching work they must do to pass along to their clients the new fines for settlement fails required by Europe’s Central Securities Depository Regulation (CSDR). One of the […]