Reporting correct customer data for the next phase of the requirements of the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) system will end up being a time-consuming and costly exercise in data management for US broker-dealer regulatory reporting, trade compliance and IT managers. US broker-dealers are likely spending all their time addressing interfirm […]
Free Webinar: Consolidated Audit Trail: Creating the Right Data Linkages
Join S3 and FinOps Report for a free webinar on creating the right data linkages for reporting to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s Consolidated Audit Trail. Sponsored by S3 Save the date: Wednesday, October 21, 2020 Time: 4:30PM EST Contact: Michelle Lindenberger, S3 media/PR manager, at lindenberger.michelle@gmail.com for free dial-in details For broker-dealers’ trade operations, regulatory reporting, […]
CAT: FINRA’s Exams, Deadlines Won’t Be a Virtual Breeze
Trade compliance, regulatory operations, and technology managers at US broker-dealers will need to quickly cross their Ts and dot their I’s when it comes to documentation, data, and IT if they want to pass muster with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s examiners for reporting to the new Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) and survive one of […]
Federal Court Tells Interactive Brokers to Comply With FINRA Panel’s $1M Ruling: Right or Wrong
A US federal appeals court has just sent brokerages and their customers a somber message — a ruling by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s arbitration panel is absolute regardless of its validity. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision earlier this month ended a five-year dispute between Interactive Brokers and three former […]
Coronavirus: How CCOs Can Manage (Virtually)
For chief compliance officers at financial firms, following the five Ps — prioritize, plan, protect, preserve, and paper– with the help of IT managers will become critical to ensure employees working remotely meet corporate and regulatory requirements. “Even the best designed business continuity plans likely didn’t take a global pandemic into account,” says Kristin Koloniaris, […]
SEC: CAT Reports Can Omit Some Customer Data
Data management units at US broker-dealers and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) will be creating bogus codes for sending trade execution reports required by the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) to conceal the identities of investors and mitigate potential damage from cybersecurity breaches. The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-awaited decision earlier this month to […]
SEC: Old Transfer Agent Rules Apply to New Blockchain
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision to register blockchain-enabled transfer agents has resurrected the issue of how it can apply securities laws to a nascent unproven technology. San Francisco-based Securitize has laid claim to being the first “agent” registered by the SEC to have developed an open-source blockchain based protocol for shareholder recordkeeping with […]
Crypto-Miners: Are They Broker-Dealers or Math Geeks?
If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, right. But does it quack? That’s the question broker-dealer Templum Markets has raised to the US Securities and Exchange Commission about crypto-miners which has polarized the crypto-community into deciding whether they should be regulated as broker-dealers. Fueling the debate are conflicting interpretations of the Securities and […]
FINRA: E-Mail Oversight Needs Quantity and Quality
Reasonable. How is a US broker-dealer’s compliance manager supposed to interpret that word when it comes to overseeing the firm’s e-mail correspondence. With some difficulty and much deliberation on quantity and quality as shown by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s recent US$32,000 fine and censure of Utah-based broker-dealer Wilson-Davis which specializes in microcap stocks. […]
Consolidated Audit Trail: Those Messy Data Linkages
US brokerage operations managers are quickly turning their attention to how they will meet the cumbersome requirements for data linkages now that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has been stepped in at the eleventh hour to operate the new consolidated audit trail (CAT). The initial phase-in of CAT — 2a and 2b– starting in […]