Gone are the days when the middle office is maligned as being strictly a cost-center dragging down investment performance. Today more fund managers are concluding that more effective management of their middle office can not only reduce operating expenses, but also give them a competitive edge with investors and keep regulators at bay. Fund management […]
Fund Operations Managers Weather UK’s Brexit Storm
While the UK and European Union leaders will have two years to come up with a gameplan for how the UK will separate from the European Union, middle and back-office operations professionals at fund management shops are taking it one day at a time during extreme market volatility. The UK’s legal limbo has caused higher trading […]
The Derivatives ID Dilemma: Industry Accord Suggests an ISIN Solution
Is the International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) not fit for purpose for identifying certain types of derivatives, as claimed by some partisans for other identifiers or just “concerned citizens” of the derivatives realm? Or is the only possible solution for regulatory reporting requirements a Unique Product Identifier (UPI) based on the descriptive taxonomy developed by […]
KYC Onboarding: Taking a Global Centralized Approach
Name, rank and serial number. That’s what national military organizations across the globe use to identify their members. Too bad the same simplicity can’t be used by financial firms when it comes to identifying their customers and counterparties, bemoan operations and compliance specialists. Instead financial firms must deal with a hodgepodge of regulatory requirements across […]
Investment Research: Broker-Dealers Have Their Own Unbundling to Do
Fund managers may not be the only ones forced to unbundle payment for trade execution from research when the new incarnation of the European Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) takes effect. Broker-dealers will be facing a similar challenge and they could be just as unprepared. Ordinarily classifying the research they provide fund managers as “value add” […]
Commission Unbundling: What Price Is that Research in the Window?
It’s a given that fund management firms should pay for research — aka the ideas and analysis — that helps them make decisions on whether or not to buy or sell a particular stock or bond and when. Yet the European Commission now wants to put their spending on research under the regulatory microscope. A new […]
OTC Derivatives: The Identifier Debate Heats Up in Europe
As over-the-counter derivatives emerge from the shadowed status of private bilateral contracts into the relative sunlight of clearinghouse operations and regulatory reporting, there is a war heating up about a brand new problem — how these deals will be identified. Stocks, bonds, exchange-traded derivatives and other financial instruments are all regularly assigned unique codes that […]
Phone Monitoring Records: Mining for Profit?
Three years after the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) began requiring financial firms to record all mobile phone communications related to securities transactions, compliance remains dangerously weak. “Financial firms need to start thinking about just how they will comply and what additional benefits they can obtain for the costs involved,” says Rik Turner, senior analyst at […]
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 […]