(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 […]
NY Court: Goldman’s Morse Can Sue Fidessa for Wrongful Termination
A New York appeals court has just sent a stern warning to Wall Street, fintech and other firms: you can’t fire any of your employees simply because of who they married to or are even romantically involved with. The Appellate Division of New York’s First Department ruled that Christopher Morse, now vice president of electronic […]
Margin: Tackling Initial Hurdle for Uncleared Swaps
First it was variation margin. Now it is initial margin for uncleared swap transactions causing compliance, operations and financial technology managers at fund management shops angst. As of September 1, 2019 many fund managers must know whether they meet the threshold for posting initial margin, calculate it correctly and set up the right custodial contracts […]
NY State of Mind for Cybersecurity: Take Three
The US Labor Day weekend won’t be a happy one for some cybersecurity compliance, technology and operations managers at New York-based banks. They will likely be scrambling to successfully implement the third phase of New York’s onerous cybersecurity rules, effective September 3. Among the multitude of tasks to complete under 23 NYCRR 500 encrypting data and […]
BofAML’s Fake Trade Reports: Governance Breakdown?
How could Bank of America Merrill Lynch get away with giving institutional customers phony trade execution, transaction cost analysis and expense reports for five years? Ten brokerage operations and IT managers contacted by FinOps Report can only speculate after reading the scant details in separate settlement reports issued by the Office of the Attorney General […]
Crypto Laundering: AML Regs Tighten
Anti-money laundering managers at banks and other financial institutions need to adapt their customer onboarding and transaction-monitoring approaches to cryptocurrency investors or risk regulatory fines, warn AML experts. Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, already are involved in nearly ten percent of the total US$2 trillion of dirty money that is washed annually. That percentage is […]
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 […]
Striking an NAV: Fund Managers’ Contingency Options
(Editor’s Update on December 5, 2018: US fund managers are getting serious about striking back-up NAVs on their own. Milestone Group tells FinOps Report that it has nabbed two top-tier US headuartered fund managers to use its pControl Oversight platform to monitor their fund administrators and to strike back-up NAVs in-house, instead of relying on […]
Cryptocurrency: Next Frontier for Cost-Basis Reporting
US personal tax day, April 17, was either the beginning of a lot of heartache or overdue operational relief for investors in cryptocurrency. Investors who haven’t paid the right amount of taxes for profits earned during the cryptocurrency boom could face fines and audits from the Internal Revenue Service. Alternatively, they could also benefit from […]