SS&C Technologies’ recent US$44 million jury verdict in a lawsuit against Clearwater Analytics has put Wall Street’s legal and human resource managers on alert to protect their firms from the receipt of trade secrets when hiring key employees from the competition. “HR and legal departments are a company’s first line of defense against litigation from […]
Free Webinar: Eight Steps to Manage Third-Party CyberRisk
Join FinOps Report (www.finopsinfo.com) for a FREE educational webinar on Managing Third Party CyberRisk: A Best Practice Approach Date: June 4, 2019 Time: 430PM to 530PM EST Interviewer: Chris Kentouris, Editor and Founder of FinOps Report Panelist: Joanna Fields, Managing Principal of Aplomb Strategies For dial-in information please contact Chris.Kentouris@hotmail.com You cannot have the best […]
Crypto-Miners: Are They Broker-Dealers or Math Geeks?
If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, right. But does it quack? That’s the question broker-dealer Templum Markets has raised to the US Securities and Exchange Commission about crypto-miners which has polarized the crypto-community into deciding whether they should be regulated as broker-dealers. Fueling the debate are conflicting interpretations of the Securities and […]
FINRA: E-Mail Oversight Needs Quantity and Quality
Reasonable. How is a US broker-dealer’s compliance manager supposed to interpret that word when it comes to overseeing the firm’s e-mail correspondence. With some difficulty and much deliberation on quantity and quality as shown by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s recent US$32,000 fine and censure of Utah-based broker-dealer Wilson-Davis which specializes in microcap stocks. […]
Swaps Margin: The Final Sweep of Document and Ops Morass
For collateral management operations and IT managers at hundreds of small to mid-sized broker -dealers and fund managment shops the nightmare of handling the new regulatory-imposed initial margin requirements for uncleared derivative contracts has just begun. Phase four of the US and non-US regulations, effective September 2019, and the ultimate phase five version, effective September […]
SEC’s New Rule 606: Execution Transparency At a Cost
For brokerage trade operations, compliance and IT managers, giving fund managers a lot more details about where and how their trades were executed to fulfill the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s enhancements to Rule 606 could turn into a major operational headache. At issue is how much data broker-dealers have readily available, how much they […]
Europe’s SFTR: Coming to US Shores?
US securities finance operations and compliance managers had better brace themselves for a US version of Europe’s Securities Finance Transaction Regulation (SFTR), caution industry consultants and market practicioners. So far, US post-trade operations and compliance managers have been spared from dealing with a US equivalent to the onerous SFTR. However, they shouldn’t be lulled into a […]
Consolidated Audit Trail: Those Messy Data Linkages
US brokerage operations managers are quickly turning their attention to how they will meet the cumbersome requirements for data linkages now that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has been stepped in at the eleventh hour to operate the new consolidated audit trail (CAT). The initial phase-in of CAT — 2a and 2b– starting in […]
AML Exams: Data Quality Takes Center Stage
Data integrity and integration. The popular terms used in trade and post-trade operations are quickly making their way into the world of anti-money laundering compliance as financial firms prepare for more stringent regulatory exams. With the number and value of fines growing, buy-side and sell-side firms are returning to the basics of evaluating their data […]
Wyoming’s Digital Custody Law: Taming the Wild West?
Wyoming’s attempt to establish banks as custodians for digital assets sounds great, but it might not be enough to convince institutional investors to take the plunge, caution some legal experts. The reason: without explicit rules from either federal securities or banking regulators, attorneys aren’t willing to tell any registered investment advisor it is on solid […]