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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
DTCC Embraces ISO 20022 for Corporate Action Elections
Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s corporate actions transformation project could well become a gamechanger for the US market by including the use of ISO 20022-compliant messages for elections, as well as notifications on corporate events. Beyond the obvious reduction of operational risk in the stickiest aspect of corporate actions processing, the expanded use of ISO […]
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: Citi, DTCC and CUSIP Global Services
Limboland in Argentina?: Fund managers and global custodians relying on Citibank as their local agent bank in Argentina remain in limbo as to whether or even how Citi will be able to exit the subcustody business in that country. As of press time, FinOps Report was unable to verify whether Citi would still be shutting […]
ECB’s Target2-Securities: Message Transformation Morass? (Updated)
This article has been updated to include comments from Incentage provided after its initial publication. Question: When are ISO 20022-compliant message types not like any ISO 20022 message types that are currently in use? Answer: When they are the messages used by the European Central Bank’s Target2 Securities (T2S) platform to communicate with European securities […]
News to Use: ISITC, BNY Mellon, Custom House and More
Oversight Pointers: Fund managers will soon have practical guidance for best practices in overseeing outsourced operations contracts with custodian bank, fund administrators and other post-trade service providers. The ISITC, trade group representing operations specialists from over 100 buy and sell-side firms, is publishing a white paper with its recommendations in the fall. The guidelines, ISITC officials […]