A US federal appeals court has just sent brokerages and their customers a somber message — a ruling by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s arbitration panel is absolute regardless of its validity. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision earlier this month ended a five-year dispute between Interactive Brokers and three former […]
National Banks as Digital Asset Custodians: Big Deal or Not?
When it comes to picking a custodian for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, the US Office of the Comptroller’s decision to green light national and state banks might not be that much of a gamechanger for every fund manager. At least not in the short-term. Currently, investors holding cryptocurrency can keep their cryptocurrency in a […]
Prime Brokerage Enters Crypto Market, Sort Of
First it was digital asset custodians. Now it is aspiring prime brokers who are grabbing the spotlight in the evolution of the cryptoasset market as it tries to become an institutional investor-friendly industry, but with regulations still so murky cryptoasset prime brokers can only be pale reflections of their traditional prime brokerage peers. Although institutional […]
CSDR: Using Predictive Analytics to Prevent Fails
Predict and prevent– that’s what back-office operations managers at buy and sell-side firms preparing for Europe’s Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) settlement discipline regime are starting to think about so they won’t have to pay hefty financial penalties or endure buy-in requirements if they fail to settle their European trades on time. Instead of bemoaning […]
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 […]
Coronavirus Plagues AML Compliance Managers
The new coronavirus pandemic is testing the ability of anti-money laundering (AML) analysts and compliance managers to adjust their methodologies and technology quickly enough to catch criminal activity. Financial firms must still conduct due diligence when onboarding customers and file suspicious activity reports (SARs) if necessary within 30 to 45 days after an alert is […]
Coronavirus: How CCOs Can Manage (Virtually)
For chief compliance officers at financial firms, following the five Ps — prioritize, plan, protect, preserve, and paper– with the help of IT managers will become critical to ensure employees working remotely meet corporate and regulatory requirements. “Even the best designed business continuity plans likely didn’t take a global pandemic into account,” says Kristin Koloniaris, […]
Vote Confirmation: Devil in the Operations Details
Determining whether a vote was actually counted at a corporate meeting has resurrected a sparring match among transfer agents, financial intermediaries, issuers and Broadridge Financial over how to operationally get the job done. Among the participants on a new end-to-end vote confirmation committee set up by the Securities and Exchange Commission to address the issue, […]
JP Morgan Whistleblower Case Tests Unclaimed Property Compliance
How hard is it to calculate past interest due? Unclaimed property operations and compliance managers at US financial firms will soon find out that the task is more difficult than they thought should JP Morgan Chase lose its appeal of a New York civil court judge’s ruling about the bank’s required interest payment on unclaimed […]
Regulatory Ops 2020: Handling Tower of Acronyms
Compliance, operations, and IT managers will be teaming up in newly created regulatory operations departments to do data aggregation, contract renegotiation and relationship management in 2020 as they handle a slew of new regulations commonly known by their acronyms or numbers. A telephone survey conducted over the past month by FinOps Report (www.finopsinfo.com) of 100 […]