Let’s face it. Consumers aren’t eager to pay sales taxes, but neither are retailers eager to charge and collect them. Taxes not only raise prices and potentially reduce the number of sales made, but tax collection also creates operational and technological burdens to administer. Now imagine operations and IT specialists across the globe having to […]
Monitoring Proxy Advisory Firms: A New Compliance Challenge?
Proxy advisory firms are supposed to help fund managers decide how to vote their shares in annual or other corporate meetings and even cast votes for them. But that doesn’t mean fund managers should just let them do all the work and forget about it. Apparently that’s what the US Securities and Exchange Commission thinks […]
Institutional Investors: Sniff Testing a Hedge Fund Manager’s Operations
Due diligence. It’s the homework institutional investors do when selecting fund managers as part of their asset allocation process. The selection process often resembles a courtship, with one exception. The investors– typically pension plans, endowments, non-profits and insurance companies — have the upper hand. If they aren’t satisfied with what they hear– and feel — […]
Countdown to AIFMD: Addressing the New Risk Management Landscape
With the deadline for fund managers to apply for regulatory recognition as alternative investment fund managers (AIFMs) less than a week away, one would think they have already crossed their T’s and dotted their I’s when it comes to being prepared. But that’s not the case for many, according to industry research. Surprisingly, most small […]
FIXing Post-Trade Matching: Made to Order
“If it ain’t broken don’t fix it” is a common sentiment in the financial industry. But to afficionados of the FIX message protocol, the process of matching trade details is broken, so it needs solutions Providers of order management systems think they are just the right folks to fix the problem — the so-called monopoly enjoyed by post-trade communications provider […]
Collateral Management: Is Access Really King?
When it comes to managing collateral, fund managers can just forget about all the doomsday talk of a shortfall. There is enough to go around — and to fulfill a multitude of regulatory requirements — if only it could be easier to access it. Or so says a new study supported by the US Depository […]
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 […]
FATCA: Four Steps to Meeting IRS Reporting Requirements
When the US Treasury made foreign financial institutions responsible for catching potential American tax evaders overseas, it also gave them a major migraine they are now finding difficult to alleviate. Determining with certainty who is responsible for paying US taxes just became their job. If they choose not to cooperate with the US’s Foreign Account Tax Compliance […]
Cybersecurity: Monitoring Risk in the Supply Chain
Outsourcing providers may promote themselves as trusted partners to their clients, but when it comes to cybersecurity risk, financial services firms would be wise to treat them as an extension of their own business — with all the hard scrutiny and ongoing monitoring of vulnerability they do inside their own corporate walls. And maybe more, […]
Outsourcing: Three Steps to Preparing for a Possible Exit
If the experience of outsourcing operations or IT infrastructure is something like being married to the third-party service provider, ending that relationship can be just as painful and messy as a divorce. Fund management executives shouldn’t assume their outsourcing relationships are going to last forever or even to the end of the agreed upon timetable […]