FinOps takeaway: Your count of “full-time employees” may not be what the IRS says it is. Mainstream attention on the controversial US healthcare legislation has focused on how difficult or financially affordable access to health insurance may be for individual people. For employers, there is a far larger and only slowly emerging story in the huge difficulty and cost they […]
Fund Managers: Addressing the Regulatory Data Quagmire (Updated)
Dodd-Frank. EMIR. FATCA. AIFMD. Solvency II. The reporting obligations of fund managers just keep growing. The snowballing burden — with new regulations and reporting rules popping up at an alarming pace — is forcing many to step back from their usual resigned willingness to learn and follow one regulatory rule after another. The emerging alternative: looking at the bigger picture of […]
IBOR: Navigating the Options for a Dream Position Engine
As fund managers struggle to increase their investment returns, reduce their costs, and satisfy growing regulatory demands they are quickly embracing an old concept — data management — albeit with a new twist. Implementing the so-called investment book of record, or IBOR for short, has become a de facto requirement for fund managers who need […]
Europe’s Consolidated Tape: Reality or Pipedream?
While the European Parliament has finally voted its support for the new version of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), one of its most controversial goals — establishing a central source of post-trade prices from regulated markets — is still far from fruition. The new MiFID mandate may include some stepping-stone dates, but the language of […]
Not in the CARDS? US Clearing Brokers Protest Customer Reporting
A new reporting plan designed to flag possible misbehavior by US brokers, is drawing backlash from their back-office correspondent clearing firms responsible for complying. Their complaints? They run the gamut from the overwhelming costs and liabilities involved in following new rules to questions of how the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is going to manage the flood of data […]
“Let Us Do It”: Data Utilities Target Mid-Office Data Drudgery
Data utility — it’s a buzzword, which has cropped up sporadically in the data management arena and is now making a comeback, albeit in diverse flavors. The latest wave of incarnations: a reference data utility launched by IBM and GoldenSource, and a know-your-customer (KYC) data utility disclosed by global messaging network SWIFT. Their unveilings earlier this […]
Hedge Fund Managers: Taming the Data Headache
It’s a given that hedge fund managers consume data — and lots of it — to ensure the most lucrative trading strategies and efficient post-trade processes. They need to know just how the global market is moving at every fraction of a second every business day and just which transactions must be cleared and settled […]
Legal Entity Identifiers: Scrutiny of EU Firms Tightens
When the concept of a new global legal entity identifier first took shape among regulators in the US and across the globe, it was hailed as a brilliant revolutionary move. Financial firms and trading counterparties could now be appropriately identified and tracked by regulators seeking to mitigate systemic risk. No longer would they have to […]
Private Equity Managers: Data Becoming a ‘Four-Letter Word’?
Private equity fund managers are starting to crack under the pressure of finding data and turning it into useful intelligence for investors and regulators at record speed, say investment operations experts. Although many of them can ill afford it, they will eventually have to invest in the necessary data infrastructure for the same reasons as […]
What to Do When the CFTC Gets Into Your Phone Calls
A new requirement from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that all oral communications on some over-the-counter transactions be recorded, could end up being technologically and economically unfeasible. In its role as overseer of the burgeoning US$650 billion swaps market — a designation assigned by the US Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act — the CFTC […]