States might soon make a real claim on unclaimed virtual currency accounts, forcing digital asset custodians and exchanges to address murky statutes and potential legal liability. “States have a good nose to smell just which industry isn’t compliant with their escheat laws and could target the cryptocurrency market,” cautions Robert Peters, managing director and head […]
FinCEN’s New Reporting Category: Human Trafficking
Anti-money laundering managers at US banks could soon beef up their efforts to help law enforcement catch human trafficking, thanks to a new line item on their suspicious activity reports (SARs). AML executives aren’t responsible for prosecuting the criminals, but they might prioritize sniffing business activity for signs of human trafficking now that the US […]
Initial Swaps Margin: Facing Final Custodian Interactions
Investment funds, which have to meet initial margin requirements for uncleared derivative transactions in 2020 and 2021, will soon find that their biggest legal and middle-office challenges could be dealing with custodian banks. Far more investment funds will be affected by the final phases of initial margin requirements than in the initial four phases, starting […]
Opportunity Zone Fund Admin: Can Blockchain Do the Trick?
Blockchain is finding a new opportunity in middle and back-office operations for opportunity zone (OZ) fund managers, but can it outperform the current alternative fund administrators? One Arizona entrepreneur certainly thinks so. Co-founded and part-owned by Nico Willis, chief executive of cost-basis technology provider Networth Services, new fund administrator Agora AltX uses Hyperledger Fabric’s permission-based […]
FRTB: Five Ops Steps to Recalculating Market Risk
Bank trading desk, risk, and data managers are quickly realizing that the term fundamental in the new Fundamental Review of the Trading Book legislation should be taken literally and they don’t have much time left to prepare. The European Union has set January 2022 as the timetable for banks in its jurisdiction to meet more […]
California’s Data Privacy Law: Sticky GDPR Differences
What is personal data? Who is your customer? What is the sale of data? For chief data privacy and technology officers who think that the new California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) is just a mini-version of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) answering these three simple questions could make them change their minds. Getting them […]
SEC’s Proxy Voting Guidance: What About Corporate Actions?
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent guidance on proxy voting may have unintentionally raised the issue of whether fund managers are meeting their fiduciary obligations when they vote in one-off voluntary corporate action events. Compliance managers at several US fund management firms tell FinOps Report that following the publication of the SEC’s publication of […]
Rule 606: SEC Redefines Discretionary Trades
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision to broadly define what makes a trade execution discretionary will force introducing and executing brokers to walk a thin tightrope when complying with its new Rule 606. They will have to make some tough choices on how much information the executing broker can release on a trade order […]
IRS Tells Cryptoinvestors: Find Your Data, a Calculator, and Good Lawyer
If you are a cryptocurrency investor, you can forget about enjoying your summer vacation, thanks to the US Internal Revenue Service. By the end of August, you could be one of the 10,000 investors to have received a letter from the US tax agency that you owe taxes on your cryptocurrency investments. You will need […]
State Street’s US$88M Fine Highlights Deceptive “Pass-Along” Custody Fees
How can a global custodian bank convince clients for almost two decades that a twenty-five cent cost to transmit a message through the SWIFT network transmission is really worth a $5 “pass-along” fee? Easily, when fund managers aren’t paying attention and no one at the custodian bank is minding the shop. That’s no longer the […]