The US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority could soon be offering broker-dealers some badly-needed guidance on how they should handle cryptocurrencies and similar products. Industry sources tell FinOps Report that FINRA is in discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Department of Trading and Markets about FINRA crafting a regulatory notice informing broker-dealers how to apply […]
IRS Creates Legal,Ops Headaches for Escheated IRAs
(Editor’s Update on November 29, 2018): Tax operations, compliance and technology managers at US financial firms now have until January 1, 2020 to implement the Internal Revenue Service’s rule to withhold taxes on unclaimed individual retirement accounts. The IRS’ one-year extension is far less than the 18 months requested by the securities industry but provides […]
GDPR: Final Call for US Asset Managers
Does Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) apply to me? If compliance and operations managers at US asset management firms are asking themselves that question, they are already in hot water. They should have started data mapping and amending their contracts with third-party service providers such as fund administrators and transfer agents, say data privacy […]
Custody: Unchartered Waters for Digital Assets
Qualified custodian. That’s a term that compliance and operations managers at registered investment fund advisors, not to mention the US Securities and Exchange Commission, are now grappling with, when it comes to the safekeeping of digital assets. The reason is two-fold. For starters, it is unclear whether the SEC’s custody rule for RIAs investing in […]
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 […]
SEC 12b-1 Fee Amnesty: Costly Ops Work
A, B, C. Those three simple letters of the English alphabet could cause plenty of administrative grief for compliance and middle office operations managers at US mutual fund management firms over the next few months. That is, if they hope to take advantage of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s leniency program on overcharges to investors in […]
Unclaimed Checks: Delaware on the Hunt Again?
Operations and compliance managers at US banks had better be prepared to defend their escheatment policies for uncashed checks and money orders to Delaware. The state could use the data it uncovers during the discovery period of a Supreme Court case involving MoneyGram’s uncashed “official checks” to dig deeper into the unclaimed property records of […]
FINRA Rule 4210: Managers Beware of Margin Calls
With less than 100 days left before new Rule 4210 of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority becomes effective, broker-dealers aren’t the only ones that should be preparing for new margin requirements for to-be-announced (TBAs) transactions and other forward settling fixed-income trades. Even if indirectly, investment management firms will also be in the regulatory crosshairs. Time is […]
KYC: Beneficial Owner Rules Looming
In the last 11 weeks before the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s new rules on tracking beneficial ownership of customers take effect, financial firms need to decide how deeply they intend to dig into their customer’s shareholder base. And how they intend to do it, as the rules are not always explicit. As of May […]
SEC to Fund Admins: No Proof, No NAV
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has just warned fund administrators they can’t take the word of a fund manager when calculating the net asset value (NAV) of an investment fund. When explaining its recent US$561,000 fine against Gemini Fund Services, the US regulatory agency says that when assigning an NAV to a mutual fund, […]