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.
Whatever label you use, instant, immediate, faster or real-time payments have moved to the top of the agenda at every payments-related event so far this year and are sure to be high on the agenda when Swift’s annual Sibos event lands in Singapore in October. Nearing the halfway mark for 2015, here’s a roundup of the stories so far …
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.
Global interoperability of real-time payments systems will require harmonisation of market practices and standards. A group of international clearing houses, banks, vendors, payments associations and other parties have proposed setting up an activity to look at how to deliver this under the aegis of the International Standards Organisation – and set an ambitious target of collating an initial variant of ISO 20022 usage guidelines for real-time payments before the summer.
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.
Financial messaging and data integration specialist Volante Technologies has taken a step into the world of packaged products with the launch of VolPay Foundation, a development platform “designed to ease the challenges of payment integration and payment processing projects”.
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 Banking Industry Architecture Network has announced six new members including ACI Worldwide, Atos, EY and Zafin. Its global network now numbers 58 banks, service providers, software vendors and academic partners.
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.
As international regulators demand more detail from banks on payments to individuals and companies, the first order of business is to ensure compliance with mandates. Migrating Swift MT payment formats to ISO 20022 will allow the industry to shape the transformation of payment messaging standards rather than have others shape it – but there is a need to set timelines for implementation or cede control.
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?
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.
