How can we effectively monitor systemic risk in the swaps market? That is the question now facing regulators around the world, and if financial firms were to have their way a federated approach to aggregating data would be the best option, they tell FinOps Report. Whether this scenario — one of the options now under review by […]
Solvency II Creates Big Data Challenge for Fund Managers
If regulations such as AIFMD, EMIR and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act weren’t enough to prompt fund managers to shore up any deficiencies in their data management capabilities, Solvency II could finally do the trick — and quickly. Called the Basel III of insurance firms, Solvency II has also been called a “data nightmare” by […]
US FINCEN: Digging Deeper into Beneficial Owner Identities
Financial firms have it hard enough verifying the identity of their customers. They have to make certain to ask all the right questions and hope they get the right answers. It is an error-prone process, but at least the main thing the bank, broker-dealer, or mutual fund has to know is just who it is directly […]
US Cost-Basis Reporting: Easing the Taxing Final Lap (Updated)
FinOps takeaway: You can’t second-guess the investor; be ready for everything. Although the third phase of the US Internal Revenue Service’s new rules on cost-basis reporting — those affecting accounts in debt instruments — technically became effective in January 1, 2014, broker-dealers and other financial intermediaries have plenty more operational blood, sweat and tears to spill […]
Hedge Fund Managers: The Big Headache of Healthcare Reform
FinOps takeaway: Your count of “full-time employees” may not be what the IRS says it is. Mainstream attention on the controversial US healthcare legislation has focused on how difficult or financially affordable access to health insurance may be for individual people. For employers, there is a far larger and only slowly emerging story in the huge difficulty and cost they […]
Money Market Fund Managers: SEC Ships New Operational Challenges
After years of uncertainty about how regulatory reform would play out, money market fund managers may be relieved to know finally how they will be regulated by new rules adopted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. But the news won’t be particularly comforting to the operations, compliance and technology staff of the funds, which represent a third of […]
Fund Managers: Addressing the Regulatory Data Quagmire (Updated)
Dodd-Frank. EMIR. FATCA. AIFMD. Solvency II. The reporting obligations of fund managers just keep growing. The snowballing burden — with new regulations and reporting rules popping up at an alarming pace — is forcing many to step back from their usual resigned willingness to learn and follow one regulatory rule after another. The emerging alternative: looking at the bigger picture of […]
European Transaction Tax: The Taxing Job of Getting Ready
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 […]
GATCA: Brace for FATCA on Steroids
The US Internal Revenue Service didn’t make any friends among financial firms abroad when it imposed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) to make non-US financial institutions responsible for preventing tax evasion by US persons. Yet it definitely caught the attention of tax authorities in other nations. Several dozen of the world’s largest markets — led […]
EMIR: Gaining Control of Old Errors and New Requirements
EMIR, it’s short for European Market Infrastructure Regulation. It has also become a four-letter word for fund managers struggling to fulfill reporting requirements. About five months after the effective date for fund managers and broker dealers to send details of trades executed on exchange-listed and over-the-counter swap transactions to recognized trade repositories, fund managers are bemoaning the number […]