Digital currency continued to receive a hot-and-cold reception around the world this week, with Chinese e-commerce provider Alibaba banning Bitcoin payments, just as the Royal Canadian Mint prepared to demo a digital currency of its own.
As the payments industry awaits new rules on GPR prepaid cards set to be issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in May, an in-depth piece in Sunday’s Washington Post offers a fascinating look at the inner workings of the agency—and valuable insights into the CFPB’s origins, culture and motivations.
Financial messaging cooperative Swift is looking to capitalise on the impending trade reporting deadline for EMIR, the European Commission’s new rulebook for derivatives, which comes into effect next month.
Dutch bank ABN Amro has become a member of German derivatives exchange Eurex’s OTC Clear service, which clears interest rate swaps, as part of the bank’s compliance with EMIR.
Most banks are still not ready for the arrival of Swap Execution Facilities, the new category of trading venues created by the Dodd-Frank act in the US to handle OTC derivatives. Worse still, market participants are almost universally negative about SEFs, according to a new paper by research house GreySpark Partners.
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.
The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed Janet Yellen as chairman of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Ben Bernanke, whose term expires Jan. 31, after eight years in that post.
Barclays has been fined $3.75 million by the US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for its failure to keep electronic records, including emails and instant messages, which are required by law. The failure is the latest in a string of recent fines for the bank.
Most folks this week are concentrating on tracking down last-second gifts or holiday dinner menu items. Not U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). He is, again, looking to “rein in hidden fees and strengthen financial protections offered by prepaid card companies” with new legislation announced today.
Five international banks are to become direct participants in the UK’s CHAPS high-value payments system as part of the Bank of England’s efforts to reduce systemic risk.
In a recent press release, the CFPB called on financial institutions to “voluntarily” disclose to the public its financial product marketing agreements made with colleges and universities.
As we approach year-end, the Canadian federal government has introduced three items of significance to federally regulated financial institutions (FRFIs).
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.
Electronic fixed income trading, one of the last major asset classes traded by humans, could take a big step forward when a new Nasdaq OMX dark pool trading venue goes live next year.
Moving to improve and clarify payroll card industry practices, MasterCard today released new standards requiring all employers and payroll card providers involved in offering MasterCard-branded payroll cards to meet specific protocols for consumer choice and transparency
IntercontinentalExchange has revealed further details of its plans for Liffe, following its acquisition of NYSE Euronext in November.
Germany’s Commerzbank has just signed up to Regis-TR, the European trade repository owned by German CSD Clearstream and Spanish CSD Iberclear, as part of the bank’s drive to ready itself for the EMIR legislation on OTC derivatives reporting.
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.
The Federal Reserve has issued guidance on managing outsourcing risk to assist financial institutions with understanding and managing the risks associated with outsourcing bank activity to a service provider.
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.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau won’t issue its proposed rules for GPR prepaid cards until May of 2014, according to the agency’s updated rulemaking agenda.
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.
As Europe’s post-trade infrastructure is subjected to increasing levels of regulation, CSDs will be forced to change their business models to stay alive, custodians will be forced to seek alliances to find economies of scale, and brokers will have to outsource parts of their mid and back office processes to stay in the game, according to analyst firm Celent.
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.
Fintech vendor Volante Technologies has launched its T2S Accelerator, which is designed to help financial services firms to prepare for the T2S settlement platform.
The No. 1 barrier to consumer adoption of flexible spending accounts (FSAs) has been removed. The U.S. Treasury and IRS on Halloween announced they were changing their stance on the so-called “use-or-lose” rule, enabling consumers for the first time to rollover up to $500 from their FSAs instead of forfeiting those funds back to their employers.
Regulators should consider carefully the implications of their actions, and not be too hasty to censure or restrict trading activity on dark pools, according to a report released by analyst firm Celent this week. The findings have been supported by senior financial services executives at Fidessa, who have called for investor choice to be maintained.
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?
Market participants need to be sure they understand how their collateral is being handled. They also need to make sure they are ready for EMIR, according to financial executives at the Mondo Visione Exchange Forum this week.
Change is coming to the prepaid card industry, whether by regulation or legislation, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray promised lawmakers this week at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, but he declined to provide a timetable. “[Prepaid cards] are one of the problem areas in consumer financial protection because they’re a hole in the […]
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.
