After several weeks of speculation, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) was indicted yesterday on federal corruption charges over allegations he accepted bribes from a donor in exchange for political favors.
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
The UK’s new Payment Systems Regulator looks set to shake up the way the industry is structured, with reviews of the ownership of the infrastructure and of the way that indirect access is managed through sponsoring banks.
More than half (51 percent) of mobile banking users in the U.S. had deposited a check using their mobile phones last year, up from 38 percent in 2013, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest study, “Consumers and Mobile Financial Services 2015.”
An industry group is calling 2015 the “year of the prepaid economy” in the U.K., as consumers there increasingly adopt prepaid cards for everyday spending, online shopping and transit.
Tanzania is taking steps to tighten up electronic payments against fraud, with the government working to establish best practices, regulations and supervision of efficient, effective payment, clearing and settlement systems, according to Finance Minister Saada Mkuya Salum.
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 CFPB received nearly 5,800 comments on its proposed prepaid regulations before yesterday’s deadline.
A quartet of congressmen has formed a group to explore and support emerging payment technologies.
The NBPCA is calling on the CFPB to limit the scope of its proposed prepaid regulations to focus on primary transaction accounts and to, among other things, simplify disclosures rather than adding complexity for consumers.
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 CFPB is finalizing its consumer narrative policy and, 90 days after the policy is published in the Federal Register, consumers who have opted in will be able to make their complaints about financial products and services in the bureau’s Consumer Complaint Database public.
The Colorado congressman suggests having too many disclosures is a disservice to consumers.
The CFPB will be holding a field hearing concerning payday lending at noon EDT, Thurs., March 26, in Richmond, Va.
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.
The U.S. Treasury’s Direct Express prepaid benefit card program earned a 95 percent satisfaction rating from cardholders in 2014, marking the sixth consecutive year of near 100 percent customer satisfaction.
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 Supreme Court is backing the authority of regulators to reinterpret their own rules without seeking industry input.
The CFPB is considering next steps in weighing new regulations for arbitration agreements widely used in financial services businesses to settle consumer disputes, following today’s release of the 728-page “Arbitration Study: Report to Congress 2015.”
The long road to interchange reform in the European Union has come to an end of sorts with passage of interchange caps today in the European Parliament.
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.
CFPB Director Richard Cordray today addresses the House Financial Services Committee for the bureau’s semi-annual report to Congress.
New York is considering a plan to hold top banking executives personally responsible for the quality and effectiveness of their firms’ AML efforts.
The CFPB’s Antonakes explained his bureau’s supervisory approach and enforcement actions and how they are different from that of the federal banking agencies.
The CFPB is updating the system credit card issuers use to submit their card agreements to the agency’s public database, and the new automated process could be used by prepaid card issuers if submitting cardholder agreements as proposed by the agency’s NPRM on prepaid accounts becomes law.
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?
European regulator ESMA is preparing to issue hundreds of pages of MiFID II cost-benefit analysis and Q&A material between now and July – but market participants are concerned about unresolved issues and rushed implementation as the deadline draws ever closer.
In the Oscar-winning film The Theory of Everything the lead character Stephen Hawking lays out his vision of a single equation that explains all physical aspects of the universe. This rarefied scientific debate has echoes in the more prosaic world of Transaction Cost Analysis in financial markets, where the availability of more granular data coupled with pressure from regulators is driving a whole new wave of research and analysis, says ITG’s Michael Sparkes.
A federal judge has ruled that American Express no longer may bar retailers from steering customers toward paying with cards with lower merchant fees.
Pay.gov, the U.S. government’s online payments portal for 90 federal agencies, is expanding to embrace digital wallets, including PayPal and Dwolla, the U.S. Treasury announced this week.
The Financial Conduct Authority plans to conduct a market study of the investment and corporate banking sector to decide if competition in the sector is working properly. It may also look into the asset management later in the year.
The U.S. government is the latest to get behind Apple Pay as part of its commitment to encourage more secure payments technologies, the White House announced during its Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University on Feb. 13.
Lawmakers last week reintroduced a bill to add congressional oversight for the CFPB, which currently operates independently.
Financial institutions are being urged to revisit their cyber-security following revelations that an online gang using the Carbanak malware stole up to $1 billion from banks in 30 countries around the world in a series of highly-sophisticated attacks over the last two years.
