Intergovernmental agreements will help foreign financial institutions more easily meet the requirements of the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which aims to curtail tax evasion by US persons abroad. Or so financial firms around the world were told by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and their local tax authorities. That’s not exactly a […]
Fund Managers and FATCA: Behind the Curve Or Just Being Prudent?
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which aims to help the US Internal Revenue Service catch potential tax evaders outside its radar, has always been viewed as a difficult regulation for financial firms to follow and with key deadlines close at hand some fund managers still apparently overwhelmed. They are so overwhelmed that they are massively unprepared […]
Bad European Data Validation Rules Give Banks Reporting Jitters
It’s hard enough for bank operations and financial reporting specialists to fill out all the data points and formats required by regulators in filing mandatory documentation evidencing financial soundness. But when a major banking regulatory watchdog — the European Banking Authority — issues 290 incorrect data validation rules, the whole reporting process can go awry […]
AIFMD: No Pain, No Gain for Fund Managers
Alternative fund managers who might have been initially hot to take advantage of the new European Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) to more easily market their investment funds cross-border are quickly waking up to a cold reality: they might be ill-prepared to comply. With so little time left, they will need to warm up […]
Validating NAVs: An Ounce of Prevention Saves a Lot of Grief
Net asset value, or NAV for short: it’s a basic calculation which hundreds of mutual and other investment fund managers have to make each day to allow investors to know just how much they will pay to buy and sell shares or units. While the timetable for when the figure must be struck might differ, […]
Scottrade Fine: $2.5 Million When “Oops” Isn’t Enough
US IT and compliance directors need to pay a lot closer attention to how they jointly test and evaluate critical data generated by back-office systems. That’s the bare bones lesson, according to ten IT and compliance managers speaking with FinOps Report, that financial firms should learn from Scottrade’s reporting fiasco which resulted in a fine […]
Hedge Fund Managers: Taming the Data Headache
It’s a given that hedge fund managers consume data — and lots of it — to ensure the most lucrative trading strategies and efficient post-trade processes. They need to know just how the global market is moving at every fraction of a second every business day and just which transactions must be cleared and settled […]
Legal Entity Identifiers: Scrutiny of EU Firms Tightens
When the concept of a new global legal entity identifier first took shape among regulators in the US and across the globe, it was hailed as a brilliant revolutionary move. Financial firms and trading counterparties could now be appropriately identified and tracked by regulators seeking to mitigate systemic risk. No longer would they have to […]
Hedge Fund Accounting: Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt
With eagle-eyed institutional investors needing assurance of the accuracy of hedge funds’ operations, as well as their returns, keeping books and records is no easy one-shot deal. No matter who serves as the official fund administrator, back-up verification or “shadow accounting” has already become the modus operandi for the largest funds and is quickly taking hold among smaller ones. Over 75 percent of hedge […]
Private Equity Managers: Data Becoming a ‘Four-Letter Word’?
Private equity fund managers are starting to crack under the pressure of finding data and turning it into useful intelligence for investors and regulators at record speed, say investment operations experts. Although many of them can ill afford it, they will eventually have to invest in the necessary data infrastructure for the same reasons as […]