Chief compliance officers at US broker-dealers had better get used to answering a lot more questions from their chief executive officers about how well they are doing their jobs. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has just sent brokerage CEOs a subtle warning: we could hold you legally liable for failing to supervise your chief […]
Europe’s CSDR: New Settlement Fines, New Ops Strains
Operations, technology, legal and network managers at custodian banks and broker-dealers are starting to feel penalized when it comes to all the data collection, reconciliation and numbers crunching work they must do to pass along to their clients the new fines for settlement fails required by Europe’s Central Securities Depository Regulation (CSDR). One of the […]
US Withholding Agents Face the FATCA Music
The US Internal Revenue Service is spreading its love for the Foreign Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) to US shores. US tax operations and corporate tax directors at US banks and broker-dealers serving as US withholding agents must now deal with the IRS’ request for more information on their compliance with FATCA. If they haven’t done […]
Global Network Management: Artificial Intelligence the Charm?
For global custody network managers, analyzing the tsunami of data on dozens of local agent banks and markets to ensure the safety of client assets remains a sore spot. The use of artificial intelligence appears to be an elusive ideal, acknowledge panelists and attendees at a recent global custody event in New York hosted by […]
BofAML’s Fake Trade Reports: Governance Breakdown?
How could Bank of America Merrill Lynch get away with giving institutional customers phony trade execution, transaction cost analysis and expense reports for five years? Ten brokerage operations and IT managers contacted by FinOps Report can only speculate after reading the scant details in separate settlement reports issued by the Office of the Attorney General […]
Cybersecurity and GDPR: the Budget Battles
Protecting critical data will top the list of challenges chief compliance officers face over the next three years. So will figuring out how to calculate and divide the budget with their IT, risk, finance and operations peers. Chief compliance officers are responsible for protecting their firms from reputational and legal risk. They are accustomed to […]
KYC: Beneficial Owner Rules Looming
In the last 11 weeks before the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s new rules on tracking beneficial ownership of customers take effect, financial firms need to decide how deeply they intend to dig into their customer’s shareholder base. And how they intend to do it, as the rules are not always explicit. As of May […]
FINRA to Broker-Dealers: Are You Liquid Enough?
Risk and financial reporting managers at clearing firms and large broker-dealers could soon have to recode their back office systems and establish new procedures. Why? To quickly inform the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) whether they have a liquidity problem and report a lot more information about their financing deals. The self-regulatory agency for broker-dealers […]
OTC ISINs: Few Users Pay Much More
Trading venues, banks, and broker-dealers now know for certain how much more they will have to pay to create International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs) for over-the-counter derivatives. It turns out that it’s a lot more. In a recent statement, the Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB) said that instead of a €65,000 annual fee, power users will have […]
Love Taxes, Operations: Be a Tax Ops Director
Knowledge of processing 1099 Forms, cost basis-reporting, Internal Revenue Service Section 871(m), financial transaction taxes and corporate actions, FATCA, and issues and errors management. Over ten years of corporate tax compliance experience necessary. Those are just some of the qualifications that large global asset servicing providers — Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and JP Morgan — […]