Asset managers can start looking forward to an industry-standard way to communicate with sponsors and overlay management of unified managed accounts (UMAs). Resurrecting the hub concept announced with much fanfare by the DTCC in 2011 and quietly abandoned by the US infrastructure giant the next year, a replacement is in the works through a collaboration between the Money Management […]
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 — […]
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 […]
Automating Corporate Actions: Four Ways to Generate Successful ROI
Automating the handling of corporate actions should be a given, considering the financial risk fund managers, broker-dealers and banks face if they make just one mistake. Apparently that’s not necessarily so. The reason: justifying the expense to C-level management isn’t as easy as it sounds, despite the need for automation being greater than ever before. […]
Investment Breaches: Prevention Better than Consequences
Portfolio compliance experts at fund management firms may not like to talk about their accidental breaches of investment guidelines, but they are quickly waking up to their need to do something about them. There is simply too much at stake. Portfolio compliance is a fundamental competence investors and regulators assume they’re getting. Admitting to even a few breaches doesn’t inspire confidence, […]
US Cost-Basis Reporting: Pay Up Now or Pay A Lot More Later
US tax experts are sounding a loud alarm bell for financial-firm clients this tax season. They had better be prepared to comply with the Internal Revenue Service’s new cost-basis reporting rules for debt instruments, or be prepared to face the music. They won’t like the tune. The IRS will fine not only investors, but also […]
AIFMD: No Pain, No Gain for Fund Managers
Alternative fund managers who might have been initially hot to take advantage of the new European Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) to more easily market their investment funds cross-border are quickly waking up to a cold reality: they might be ill-prepared to comply. With so little time left, they will need to warm up […]
Fund Managers: A Risk-Based Approach to Tackling Cybersecurity Threats
Although Wall Streeters often criticize Washington, DC bureaucrats for being out of touch with their daily realities, the new Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity issued in February by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) might just be a notable exception. It has apparently become a hit among US investment management compliance and data security experts […]
US Fund Managers: Tackling Cybersecurity as Operational Risk
What do retail department stores and US asset managers have in common? The potential for cyberattacks, says the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has put fund managers on high alert to shore up any deficiencies in their data security technology and procedures. The securities watchdog says it will be reviewing the cybersecurity work of investment […]