Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s corporate actions transformation project could well become a gamechanger for the US market by including the use of ISO 20022-compliant messages for elections, as well as notifications on corporate events. Beyond the obvious reduction of operational risk in the stickiest aspect of corporate actions processing, the expanded use of ISO […]
ECB’s Target2-Securities: Message Transformation Morass? (Updated)
This article has been updated to include comments from Incentage provided after its initial publication. Question: When are ISO 20022-compliant message types not like any ISO 20022 message types that are currently in use? Answer: When they are the messages used by the European Central Bank’s Target2 Securities (T2S) platform to communicate with European securities […]
News to Use: ISITC, BNY Mellon, Custom House and More
Oversight Pointers: Fund managers will soon have practical guidance for best practices in overseeing outsourced operations contracts with custodian bank, fund administrators and other post-trade service providers. The ISITC, trade group representing operations specialists from over 100 buy and sell-side firms, is publishing a white paper with its recommendations in the fall. The guidelines, ISITC officials […]
Vendor Risk Management: Financial Firms under the Gun
First of a two-part series on third-party risk. For the second article, click here. Activities can be outsourced, liabilities can’t. Financial firms may understand the legal distinction, but when it comes to managing the risk involved with using external technology providers, they are too often falling asleep at the wheel, warn operations and IT experts. The reason: […]
2015: Top Ops Goals for Surviving the Regulatory Crush
With the beginning of 2015 just hours away, middle and back office operations specialists across the globe should count on a visit from C-level executives to set the tone for the new year. Forget about praise for all the hard work in 2014. Everyone now has to roll up their sleeves to address a host […]
Risk Data 2015: Silos Down, Linkage Up
Data and Risk. Besides having four letters, the two words have plenty in common based on an exhaustive list of “what’s in” and “what’s out” for 2015 released by the EDM Council, the global trade association advocating efficient enterprise data management. The profitability of financial services firms has always been based on risk analysis, and that […]
Corporate Actions: Solving the Operational Disconnect
A capital charge, stock dividend, reverse stock split, tender offer or voluntary distribution. Those are just a few of the dozens of types of corporate action events — many of them them voluntary corporate actions in which a decision must be made — that management firms have to handle on a daily basis. Who has to deal with […]
Shareholder Ballots: The Quest to Confirm a Vote
An investor receives information about a corporate agenda and casts its votes. It happens every day of the week and most frequently from February through June when most US firms hold their annual meetings. But just because a shareholder votes, doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any way to verify the vote made its way to the issuer, […]
Russia: Behind-the-Scenes Progress on Operational Risk
US and European sanctions aside, the Russian securities depository and regulators are staying on track toward their goal of turning Moscow into a major financial center through two badly needed operational reforms — the automated processing of corporate actions and electronic proxy votes for annual meetings in Russian corporations. In line with the global trend toward using ISO-compliant messages for […]
Russia Sanctions: Narrow Focus Makes Compliance Trouble
Asset managers have to deal with trading restrictions against countries on U.S. or foreign sanctions lists every day. Trading with certain countries or in issues from certain companies is forbidden, period. The black and white requirements are clear to understand so they are easy to follow. Not so, when it comes to the new sanctions imposed by the U.S. government […]