(Editor’s Note: This article was updated on February 29 to reflect the JSE’s announcement on February 26 that it had selected July 11 as the go-live day for T+3.) South Africa is in the last lap of a longstanding project to shave two days off its current five day settlement cycle, even though the […]
KYC Onboarding: Taking a Global Centralized Approach
Name, rank and serial number. That’s what national military organizations across the globe use to identify their members. Too bad the same simplicity can’t be used by financial firms when it comes to identifying their customers and counterparties, bemoan operations and compliance specialists. Instead financial firms must deal with a hodgepodge of regulatory requirements across […]
SEC to Mutual Funds: Get Your Liquidity in Order
New proposed rules from the US Securities and Exchange Commission requiring mutual funds to ensure they have the necessary liquidity and correct pricing to accommodate a potential onslaught of redemptions could pose operational and IT challenges for fund management firms. That is the initial reaction from a group of ten fund management compliance, operations and […]
US T+2 Settlement: The Long Journey Officially Begins
What a difference a day makes. Until September 16, the US financial industry had only been talking about a two-day settlement cycle. Only a preliminary roadmap of the stepping stones to T+2 had been completed, indicating that at least 30 operational workflows will be affected, requiring rule, behavioral and technology changes. On that day Securities and Exchange Commission […]
The Volcker Rule: Managing the Seven Deadly Metrics
The implementation of the Volcker Rule has undoubtedly caused wailing and gnashing of teeth among some of the smartest and best-funded trading operations in the world. While its overarching principle — the prohibition of proprietary trading — might be easy to understand, proving compliance is a whole different ball of wax. With the effective date […]
Recent SEC Compliance Fines: What to Watch Out For
Four recent enforcement actions by the US Securities and Exchange Commission each highlight a different area of concern by the regulatory agency and each sends a loud and clear message in hefty fines and professional punishment. We think they offer valuable lessons to readers of FinOps Report on how to steer clear of legal landmines. Conflict […]
AML Compliance: Big Job Market, Big Hurdles
For those attracted to a career of hunting down criminals, law enforcement isn’t the only choice. Finance has always been both a juicy target and a obvious tool for white-collar criminals so Wall Street’s focus on anti-money laundering compliance has been years in the making, but it wasn’t until after the 2008 to 2009 financial crisis that regulators intensified […]
Want to Price Shares Late: Get the Post Office to Help Out
US mutual fund complexes are supposed to give investors who buy and sell shares the price of the shares on the day they receive their orders. So says the US Investment Company Act of 1940. But insurance giant Nationwide Insurance found a creative way of not doing so. It didn’t have to rely on technology, […]
News to Use: New AML Technology and Bitcoins
AML Tech Upgrade: To avoid doing business with the wrong customers and counterparties, financial firms can now rely on a new generation of software applications that go beyond traditional rules-based screening to far more sophisticated data analysis, says a new research report from Celent. The costs of not complying with anti-money laundering rules can be […]
Crime Prevention: Breaching the Veil of Omnibus Accounts
For operations and compliance professionals, the definition of financial crime is rapidly expanding to meet the threats of cyber crime, but the more common threat is money laundering or fraudulent wire transfers conducted by unscrupulous companies or individuals. For depositories and custodian banks, this traditional abuse of the financial system has acquired an additional level of […]