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 […]
FATCA Reporting Round One: The Scorecard
Wrong client classification, missing documentation proving country of citizenship, and incomplete information on investor income and account values. Those are the top three mistakes offshore fund managers tell FinOps Report they experienced when trying to send information to their local tax authorities to comply with the recent first round of reporting for the US Foreign Tax […]
BNY Mellon’s NAV Snafu: What Was and Wasn’t Learned
When technology glitches take place, cleanups can be embarrassing and messy to say the least. When it comes to critical applications they can be downright dangerous as well. The recent case involving the possible mispricing of over one thousand mutual funds and exchange-traded funds valued at over US$400 billion by BNY Mellon using SunGard Financial’s […]
Basel III: How Hedge Fund Managers Must Leverage Prime Brokers
“How important is this relationship to you?” That question is often asked by concerned spouses or romantically involved parties to get a status check on just how well their relationship is faring. For the first time ever, hedge fund managers could be forced to pose the same question to their prime brokers, thanks to the […]
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 […]
AML Transaction Monitoring: Five Steps to Getting it Right
If you think your anti-money laundering transaction monitoring software isn’t working correctly, what should you do? a) blame your vendor and replace the software b) blame your analysts and tell them to work harder c) review your data feeds and inputs d) throw your hands up and think you can’t do anything e) doubt your […]
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 […]
Operational Due Diligence: Right Questions, Right Answers
Do you have a policy to prevent cyber breaches? Do you allow employees to work remotely? Do you have a policy for valuing hard-to-price assets? Do you allow multiple parties access to your compliance system? Do you have a procedure to mitigate risk? Look familiar? These are questions drawn from questionnaires that asset-owners — pension plans, […]
Commission Unbundling: What Price Is that Research in the Window?
It’s a given that fund management firms should pay for research — aka the ideas and analysis — that helps them make decisions on whether or not to buy or sell a particular stock or bond and when. Yet the European Commission now wants to put their spending on research under the regulatory microscope. A new […]
Best AML Programs Hinge on Best Models
Market, credit and operational risk. It has become common practice for financial firms to measure, monitor and reduce each of these three categories using accepted models, or methodologies, which rely on data inputs to generate the correct results necessary to make the right decisions. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to money laundering activities even though […]