TABB Group forecasts global compliance spending among capital markets firms will some increase 7.5% to 8% in 2015, reaching $2.592 billion , and growing at a similar pace for 2016, driven by global regulations that require institutions to expand coverage, enhance existing capabilities and standardise compliance solutions and processes.
Regulators should not define how markets are structured when it comes to innovation and open access to clearing. Instead, it should be left up to the market to define how services are provided, according to speakers at the IDX FIA Europe conference in Europe this week.
As the European Commission’s MiFID II legislation moved towards implementation of technical standards, some of Europe’s national regulators are seriously worried that mandatory open access to CCPs may not be such a good idea. Concerns about the ability to manage risk and the ability to effectively handle data were highlighted by speakers at the IDX FIA conference in London yesterday.
Karla McKenna has been named head of standards at the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation on a year’s secondment from Citi, where she is director of market practice and standards.
Global regulators are struggling to find the balance between recognising each other’s existence and learning to harmonise and coordinate their activities, and protecting domestic national economic stability. But people who can’t accept that there will be some differences in regulation between Asia, Europe and the US are not realistic, according to Timothy Massad, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Industry association FIA Europe is calling on regulators to make changes to derivatives laws, including amendments to Basel III and MiFIR, as well as EMIR reporting obligations. The association argues that without the changes it is advocating, the viability of some of the new rules will be at risk.
Irish bank Permanent TSB has chosen a regulatory reporting platform from Wolters Kluwer as part of its measures to cope with Basel III. Belgian bank Banca Monte Paschi Belgio, the Belgian branch of Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, has also chosen the same OneSumX regulatory reporting solution.
EU lawmakers reached a political consensus last week on a proposal for a new EU Payment Services Directive (PSD2). This follows several months of negotiations between European Parliament, the Commission and the Council of Ministers and marks a significant step in regulatory development within the payments market
Swift is extending its Know Your Customer compliance service into the securities area, making it available to fund distributors and custodians.
Financial services firms should get a grip on their risk management and make more use of the data available to them as part of a two-way process in gaining user trust and building new revenue streams.
Regulatory compliance might be a fact of life for every financial institution, but it can be very challenging when competitive pressures come in to play. Software-based services are often now the primary means of contact between a company and its customers; IT is no longer a back-office support function
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority’s study into competition in investment and corporate banking will focus on choice, transparency, bundling and cross-subsidisation in debt and equity capital markets, mergers and acquisitions and acquisition financing. It will also consider links between competition in these primary market services and related activities such as corporate lending and broking, and ancillary services.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has launched UTIPrefix.org, a service that enables counterparties to obtain a unique trade identifier (UTI) prefix for derivatives trade reporting.
US post-trade utility the DTCC is reporting that almost half of the respondents in its most recent Systemic Risk Barometer Study cited cyber security as their top concern, making it the single largest fear and doubling its rating compared to just 12 months ago.
The integrity of data in capital markets – be it, for example, price data, trade facts, collateral balances, or other key business information – has long been a fundamental concern of technologists and business stakeholders. But how do we define integrity?
Financial institutions will need to maintain records, report transactions and supply reference data under the European Commission’s forthcoming MiFIR regulation. But those who expect plenty of time for implementation and no regulatory conflicts are likely to be disappointed, according to a new report by analyst firm Aite.
Open APIs offer the promise of a better, more efficient and more inclusive financial services world. But delegates at the Swift Business Forum in London voiced frustration about the speed and direction of progress being made during a session on the topic.
The Object Management Group has formed a new working group to study issues of documenting and controlling data across distributed cloud environments, a big inhibitor of cloud for those with strict data sovereignty requirements such as banks and financial services firms.
New trade reporting requirements that would require banks and other capital markets participants to demonstrate best execution through data will impose massive costs and will not provide an equal level of benefit, according to senior executives speaking at the Swift Business Forum in London this week.
European banks and CSDs will be forced to change their business models under relentless pressure from Basel III, CSDR and T2S. That may involve consolidating services, as well as considering opportunities for collaboration, according to Henri Bergström, head of global post trade solutions at Nasdaq.
Broker crossing networks will be heavily affected by upcoming European Commission rules on dark trading. But with 18 months to go until implementation, uncertainty still unnerves brokers and asset managers – prompting some market participants to re-examine whether they want to trade at all.
CounterpartyLink, a provider of legal entity intelligence for buy- and sell-side institutions and law enforcement agencies, has announced CPL Hierarchy Profile, a new product designed to provide a single view of the client across complex client groups.
The European Commission’s MiFID II legislation is a poorly thought-out, arbitrary and unclear piece of rulemaking that will prevent traders from being able to do their job. Worse still, a lack of clarity over the final details will inflict uncertainty and cost on market participants from now until 2017, according to delegates at TradeTech Paris this week.
A former head of the UK Security Service better known as MI5 says banks need to beware the danger of state agencies and others stealing or destroying confidential information.
Boat Services, the OTC trade reporting service provider owned by technology vendor Cinnober, plans to introduce a MiFID II compliance solution, offering publication services for all instrument classes. It will apply for authorisation by the FCA in the UK when Approved Publication Arrangement registration is available in 2016.
A banking book requires a number of careful deliberations on the use of derivatives. In particular, the introduction of EMIR, Dodd-Frank and their brethren across the world has a number of important consequences for this market.
Last week saw the launch of the Payment Systems Regulator, the first time the UK gets a regulatory body overseeing the £75 trillion a year payments systems. Its brief is clear: to open up the UK payments infrastructure, which is currently controlled by the high street banks, make it more accessible to challenger banks and fairer for consumers. The regulator has been given strong powers by the government and has already made it clear it will fine the banks if they do not step up to the mark.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has published a set of derivatives trading principles, which are part of an effort to get regulators around the world to harmonise their efforts at derivatives market standardisation. The principles include a call for greater flexibility on US swap execution facilities.
In the wake of the financial crisis, the industry has been hit hard by an almost continuous stream of conduct related issues and fines; including PPI, Libor, and more recently, Forex fixing. With high levels of media and political exposure, the industry has seen its reputation suffer
Long-term investors are deeply concerned about their ability to find liquidity, with nearly 90% afraid that predatory high-frequency traders are preying on their flows, according to a new survey by block-trading network Liquidnet.
The European Parliament’s Payment Accounts Directive creates a right to a basic bank account, which must be enshrined in national law across Europe by September 2016. But the rules represent a challenge to banks’ ability to manage their business – one that speaks to the heart of the current regulatory debate, according to delegates at the Payments International conference in London this week.
The UK should lead the development of an EU Capital Markets Union because of its better-established markets, according to a report from a House of Lords committee published today.
The financial services industry faces a daunting task as the European Commission’s MiFID II legislation draws close to its final deadline, and grave concerns about inconsistencies in the rules and the pressures of meeting it remain.
West Africa’s capital markets are changing fast as regional integration and local stock exchange initiatives combineto transform its infrastructure. Increasing adoption of FIX and a promising demographic profile help too, according to speakers at the FIX Trading Community conference in London this week.
Financial market regulations across the globe are increasingly focusing on risk management. This includes ensuring it is clear who firms are trading with and for, and confirming that firms can identify the instruments being traded. As a result, the field of reference data is increasingly held under the regulatory microscope and that lens extends to the standards used to identify financial instruments, writes Chris Pickles.
The European Securities and Markets Association is consulting financial institutions on which messaging protocol and data formats would be best for trade reporting under MiFIR. As the timeframe for reporting comes ever closer to real-time, the consequences could be serious.
SIA, in partnership with Colt, has been awarded the contract to connect Hungarian central securities depository Keler to T2S, the new single European platform for the settlement of transactions in domestic and cross-border securities.
Swift has added peer assessment to its Sanctions Testing service. An optional service it will allow financial institutions to compare the performance of their sanctions filters against those of other participating institutions.
Fenergo has enhanced its Regulatory Rules Engine software, used by investment banks investment banks and capital market firms for client lifecycle. The software enables financial institutions to comply with a range of regulatory frameworks based on a single, out-of-the-box repository of rules.
January’s Basel Committee on Banking Supervision report on banks’ progress towards BCBS 239 compliance threw up a telling contradiction. While global systemically important banks “are increasingly aware of the importance” of the BCBS 239 project, their sense of preparedness has decreased. In 2013, 10 of the 31 eligible banks reported they would be unable to comply fully by the 2016 deadline. This year, that number rose to 14. It is understandable that there is more work to be done, but how is it that the G-SIBs are moving backwards?
