Unsponsored American Depositary Receipts could be a lot less expensive and more efficient for investors to own and to receive dividends and other corporate action distributions thanks to a new permission-based blockchain platform designed by RISE Financial Technologies, according to the Boston and London-based blockchain technology firm. RISE Financial predicts its new blockchain-based infrastructure, set to […]
SEC’s New Fund Fair Value Rule: Ops and Fintech Solutions
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s new fair value rule for how fund managers should price some of their funds’ assets is causing fund managers and board of directors plenty of angst which can be eased though the right operational workflow and finech solutions, says Milestone Group. The SEC in December 2020 scrapped all of its previous […]
NYSE Puts FINRA in Hotseat For Proxy Distribution Fee Oversight
The issue of which self-regulatory authority will take over the job of setting the maximum fees issuers must pay broker-dealers and banks to mail proxy materials to beneficial shareholders has pitted the New York Stock Exchange against the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. leaving proxy operations managers and corporate secretaries in a lurch. The NYSE, which […]
Rule 605 Reports: Next for Transparency Data Overhaul?
More transparency — the mantra which has taken hold regarding Rule 606 reports — needs to make its way to Rule 605 reports, say trade execution experts and buy-side representatives who are hoping the US Securities and Exchange Commission will take action this year. US broker-dealers which forward orders to trading venues or market makers […]
Preventing Pesky US Treasury Settlement Fails
For US broker-dealer operations managers failing to settle a transaction in US Treasury securities might never have been all that problematic, but with the number of fails rising dramatically during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic one megabank–BNY Mellon– has decided to offer a preventative service in a technology partnership with Google Cloud. As the […]
Citi’s $900M Blunder Casts Light on Poor Loan Ops
A New York judge’s recent ruling that lenders to financially ailing cosmetics giant Revlon can keep US$500 million in payments they mistakenly received from Citibank is prompting operations managers of syndicate loan desks at rival banks to take a closer look at their technology, internal procedures and any offshore work. Citibank is considered an anomaly […]
New IDs for Digital Assets: FIGIs or ISO-Backed Codes?
Does the financial services industry need more than one identification standard for digital assets? Can standards for identifying traditional assets even apply for the digital asset market? Those are the two questions trading, compliance and operations managers at fund management firms, custodians, exchanges, and issuers of digital tokens will soon answer now that they have […]
COVID-19 Spurs Banks, Brokers to Reclaim “Lost” Assets
The COVID-19 pandemic is prompting a shakeup in the mundane world of unclaimed property reporting operations and compliance. Instead of simply focusing only on escheating accounts of lost investors and customers to state coffers, US banks and broker-dealers are now trying to recover funds and accounts belonging to their institutions, say unclaimed property operations managers. […]
Want to be AML Whistleblower? Not So Fast
You work in the anti-money laundering department of a major bank or brokerage and overhear a conversation about how suspicious activity reports are not being filed on a particular client; how the transaction monitoring system is not working properly; or how wire transfers are being made to a country or individual on a US sanctions […]
Registered Investment Funds 2021: New Derivatives Risk Program
For US traders, risk managers, portfolio managers, and boards of directors of registered fund management firms trading in derivatives, 2021 will be the year they figure out which derivatives to trade and how many to trade for more reasons than just making higher investment returns. Complying with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new rule 18f-4 […]