Fund managers can no longer assume all is well in their relationships with their futures commissions merchants. As many face changing or even lost relationships with their FCMs, the big question they are forced to answer: What do we do now? Their choices: either find another FCM, reduce the number of centrally-cleared swaps transactions they trade, or […]
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 […]
Fighting Financial Crime: Making Due With the Omnibus Account
A bank or broker-dealer opens an account in its name with a securities depository. One of its customers — a fund manager, broker-dealer or other firm — is involved with either money laundering activities or violating regulations involving sanctions against an individual, country or corporation. Even worse, one of their clients did the dirty deed. […]
Swap Positional Identifiers: Buy-Side Group Positions Industry Standards
A fund manager executes an order for a swap contract with a broker-dealer counterparty on a swaps execution facility (SEF), then allocates the order to separate underlying funds and clears the trade through a clearinghouse using a futures commission merchant (FCM). At the end of this process, the fund manager might report the trade to […]
Euroclear Claims First Matching Service for Payments
News of the successful launch of pan-European settlement platform Target2 Securities might be barely cold, but Euroclear, owner of the world’s largest international securities depository and several European depositories, is already taking as stab at creating new revenue streams. Based on technology developed in conjunction with London’s Merit Software, Euroclear has just launched a central matching […]
Europe’s Target2Securities: On Target or Not?
Will T2S launch as scheduled? Nine years after the European Central Bank proposed the initially controversial idea of launching a single centralized settlement platform for domestic and cross-border European securities transactions, the plans to launch might have hit a snag. It wouldn’t be the first time, but this time it would be at the 11th […]
US T+2: Getting Rid of Paper Stock Certificates
Will the US finally go paperless? When it comes to issuing certificates that evidence share ownership, that is. This is the hope of Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC), transfer agents and other industry participants, now that a two-day settlement cycle could be just around the corner for the US. For more than a year they […]
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 […]
News to Use: Omgeo, SEI, and Broadridge
Custodians on Alert: Custodians and prime brokers will be able for the first time to input standing settlement instructions (SSIs) to Omgeo’s ALERT database, potentially reducing the number of trades which fail to settle on time. SSIs refer to the last leg of the post-trade communications process when asset managers tell their custodians or prime […]
News to Use: EquiLend, 4sight and Russia’s NSD
Match, Game On: Borrowers and lending agents in securities transactions executed through EquiLend, an electronic trading platform, will now be able to reconcile far more transaction details and enable lending departments to work smarter. Although EquiLend’s new matching engine is still geared to US and foreign securities, the company expects it to have greatest uptick in […]