Major global banks need to grasp social networks, cloud computing, user-generated content, personalisation, contextual information and gamification if they are to maintain a competitive edge and stay connected with customers. But they also need to ensure their innovations are transmitted thoroughly to all employees, according to panellists at the BAFT IFSA conference in London on Monday.
The financial services sector may be heavily regulated, but it is poorly standardised. A British Standards Institute-led initiative to drive more adoption of voluntary standards could reap considerable benefits for the industry.
The rising cost of KYC at global banks is threatening to disconnect smaller regional banks and even entire countries, according to Joachim von Hänisch, head of Swiss start-up company KYC Exchange, which plans to launch next Wednesday.
Swift has created a dedicated Financial Compliance Services unit to manage a growing number of service offerings. The new unit will focus initially on the development of a Know Your Customer Registry planned for launch later this year as well as the integration and development of existing services.
With regulators agreeing that “higher expectations” must be met by G-SIFIs for risk data aggregation and reporting by 2016, firms are now under huge pressure to provide data strategies and implementation plans and end denial about any shortcomings.
The International Organisation of Securities Commissions has set out its final recommendations on the integrity and efficiency of markets, calling for regulators to think deeply about the effects of their regulation and keep monitoring the markets regularly to ensure that changes are taken into account.
With new arrivals from big names including FATCA, MiFID, Dodd-Frank and the AIFMD, 2014 is set to be another eventful year in the regulatory space. So what are our Top 10 predictions?
Bitcoin is more traceable but less regulated, less expensive but more volatile, and more decentralised but less accountable, than a regular currency. Feeling confused? That’s not the half of it, according to Ernst & Young.
With no fewer than 70,000 pages of regulation, and some record fines, 2013 will be a year to remember (or possibly to forget) for many financial services professionals
Basel III has transformed liquidity risk management departments into glorified regulatory functions, according to a new report by analyst firm Celent. As if this good news was not enough to be getting on with, the research house also inevitably concludes that banks will have to change their risk data, models, appetite, organisational and analytics frameworks too.
The data management aspects of compliance can run into tens of thousands of man-hours per institution, each year. Firms have to adapt and find new techniques to manage this increasing burden.
Wrapping up all of the reference data a large global bank needs and making sure it is standardised, automated and ready for the regulator is a big task. Japanese bank Mizuho International has just installed an EDM service from vendor Golden Source, which it says will help to support trading and satisfy the regulator.
Financial crime specialist Fiserv has just launched its Financial Crime Risk Management platform, which aims to help financial institutions to ward off financial crime and slash their risk.
Sapient Global Markets has launched a close of business reporting service that it says will help capital and commodity markets trading firms to meet regulation at lower cost.
Former SunGard chief executive Cris Conde writes about the importance of training in firms’ governance, risk management and compliance strategies and why they should treat it as an investment.
BNY Mellon has added a link to Bloomberg to its AccessEdge investment management service, which the bank says will help clients to better manage their collateral.
Bank algos may superficially appear to be well-tested – but the process may be open to any number of unexpected flaws, according to Steve Wilcockson, industry manager at big data specialist firm MathWorks.
A new mobile voice recording service is being developed by UK tech company Voxsmart, which it claims is the first to automatically capture every type of communication on a mobile device so that it can be used for trading compliance purposes, including the FCA in the UK and Dodd-Frank in the US.
MiFID II is almost upon us. Expect it to be the topic of conversation very soon. So what do you need to know about it?
Conduct risk is gaining teeth, and with MiFID II on the way it’s set to gain a whole load more. But there is just one problem: nobody quite agrees on what conduct risk means or where its boundaries are set.
Compliance concerns are causing nearly one-third of banks to turn away business, according to a new report from Aite Group.
ICAP and Interactive Data Corporation have begun a collaboration aimed at making pre-trade price information more easily available for institutional investors and risk managers.
Firms like JP Morgan and HSBC have taken major measures to improve internal controls so that they can comply with new and changing regulations. It won’t end there.
Traders, research teams and corporate broking teams all need to communicate, but as regulation imposes ever-stricter ‘Chinese walls’ within banks and brokers that is getting more difficult. Investing in internal communication tools can make a big difference, according to Simon Bailey, director and head of IT and operations at British investment banking and stockbroking firm Numis Securities.
Geopolitical shifts and increasing protectionism among nations will mean that the universal banking model is no longer sustainable – and there is little that anyone can do, according to Bill Michael, EMA head of financial services at KPMG. “The future shape of banking is beyond the control of boards, individual regulators or countries alone,” Michael […]
One may speculate that with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party having secured a quite remarkable third term in office, the last in a long line of potential hurdles for the advocates of a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) in Europe has been overcome
Financial information services company Markit is aiming to create the largest financial markets messaging community and remove barriers to cross-market communication through its open messaging initiative and supporting technology, Markit Collaboration Services.
What do hundreds-of-thousands of counterparties, dozens of regulations and your many regulators all want from you? Better counterparty classification …
Dissatisfaction with global regulators has been expressed during the entire Sibos week, with the topic being raised in sessions across the board.
As the focus on operational risk increases, Nicholas Pratt discovers that the greatest threats to a bank’s security lie outside of its four walls
A three-hour trading crash at Nasdaq OMX caused by a connectivity issue has once again put the spotlight on trading technology and the resilience of financial markets, which have been sorely tested in recent months and years.
A fragmented data architecture can threaten a financial institution’s ability to keep track of its assets. All too often, front office systems are separated into individual asset classes and lines of business, making the integration of the transaction flows from these systems very difficult.
As the world’s banks continue to struggle with severe regulatory change, economic turbulence and technological evolution, a new report by analyst firm Tabb Group says that financial institutions will have to provide immediate, friction-free access to content, community and execution, or face extinction.
The US Securities & Exchange Commission is often accused of using skateboards to chase Ferraris in its attempts to keep up with trading houses, but less than a year after announcing that it intended to create a new market surveillance system – and six months after going live with it – its cloud-based approach is […]
Whether or not the coalition government succeeds in implementing all of its proposals remain to be seen but undoubtedly the transformation of the banking sector – across all levels – is most certainly underway …
If your role has anything to do with governance, risk and compliance or with international tax agreements, then you’ll be familiar with the United States Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and the potential impact on many of the world’s financial institutions …
With six months before the 4th Capital Requirements Directive comes into force, many will be asking what technological improvements will be necessary to efficiently manage risk going forward. Before they embark on a costly overhaul of their data systems, firms should look at what regulatory trends are likely to require similar changes in the future and adjust their specification accordingly.
Predicting the future is never easy, but trying to anticipate likely developments in a particular area is essential in order to take timely action. With that caveat, Stephen Lindsay, head of standards at SWIFT, sets a boundary on a discussion on the Future of Standards: “What we are trying to do is extrapolate a little bit from where we are now to where we might be in a few years’ time,” he says.
With lots of different regulatory benchmark efforts now underway, the industry could be forgiven for not taking a common stance. With IOSCO issuing final principles, ESMA and the EBA are simultaneously consulting on a European set of principles. Meanwhile the UK is moving ahead with its own reforms.
Uncertainty over the mechanism for calculating the Libor benchmark in future remains in the wake of the generally applauded appointment of NYSE Euronext as its new administrator.
