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 […]
Fund Managers Tell Off US FINRA on TBA Margin Rules
Fund managers are up in arms about new rules proposed by the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) requiring the collateralization of many US-forward- settling agency mortgage-backed securities transactions, or those of similar asset classes, and their potential quick liquidation trades in a worse case scenario. While FINRA has direct oversight only over US broker-dealers, […]
New Swaps Clearing Rules Trigger Services Shakedown
Brave new ideas, especially when they are mandated by regulators, typically trigger a messy shakedown of systems and services — out with the old, in with the new with a lot of cost and waste lying by the roadside for others to benefit. Such is the case with the multi-faceted regulatory drive to squeeze potential systemic risk out […]
Fund Managers: Automating Risk Out of Derivatives Matching
The financial risk following discrepancies — or breaks — in matching trade details for derivative transactions can be serious business. Fund managers can easily encounter over a thousand trade breaks annually.When the process goes bad, it can go very bad and a widely anticipated growth in trading volume of exchange-traded derivatives (ETDs), makes an argument for greater automation compelling. While much of […]
Legal Entity Identifiers: Scrutiny of EU Firms Tightens
When the concept of a new global legal entity identifier first took shape among regulators in the US and across the globe, it was hailed as a brilliant revolutionary move. Financial firms and trading counterparties could now be appropriately identified and tracked by regulators seeking to mitigate systemic risk. No longer would they have to […]
Fund Managers: Get Ready for Margin Call Tsunami
Five hundred to one thousand percent. That’s the eye-popping prediction of the coming increase in margin calls in a new report from US market infrastructure Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC), “Trends, Risks and Opportunities in Collateral Management.” The trigger: new regulations and recommendations requiring far more transactions in far more asset classes to be collateralized. Relying on […]
What to Do When the CFTC Gets Into Your Phone Calls
A new requirement from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that all oral communications on some over-the-counter transactions be recorded, could end up being technologically and economically unfeasible. In its role as overseer of the burgeoning US$650 billion swaps market — a designation assigned by the US Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act — the CFTC […]