BCBS: getting back to first principles
At first glance, the Basel Committee’s new Principles for stronger banking risk governance appear to represent another huge change management challenge for global institutions.
Risk Management
Angry TradeTech delegates clash over HFT
A session at Trade Tech in London fell into chaos earlier today, as furious delegates hurled accusations across the table and members of the audience sparred aggressively with panellists.
US regulators seek huge budget increases to keep up with industry
It’s not just the banks that are struggling with the costs of regulation – so are the regulators. In the US. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has requested a 52% budget hike to $315 million dollars – described by one of its own commissioners as “improbable and unsustainable”.
Regulate to innovate?
Bankers can seem a little bit schizophrenic when it comes to regulation – much of the time they complain about the sheer weight of the regulatory burden they face, but at other times they talk of regulation as an opportunity. It could well be that as they have finally realised regulation – and plenty of it – is inevitable, some banks have decided to make a virtue out of it.
Traiana swap data repository targets Dodd-Frank, EMIR compliance
Post-trade services company Traiana has opened its Swap Data Repository Service, Harmony TR Connect, for OTC derivatives – providing a tool for market participants to comply with US Dodd-Frank legislation on trade reporting.
IPS 2013: SEPA benefits hard to see for corporates
As the February 2014 deadline for implementation of Single Euro Payment Area compatible instruments approaches, focus is moving from banks to corporates – and the increasingly clear picture is that few European corporates see any great benefit from adopting the standards involved.
Beyond a joke
A journalist, a politician and a banker walk into a bar … sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? Feel free to submit a punchline: personally, I’m starting to think that it would be a very sour joke. With banker-bashing now an established national pastime, the press having spectacularly fouled their own nest […]
State banking: reforming the UK infrastructure
At the beginning of March, George Osborne travelled to the English seaside town of Bournemouth to make a speech at the JP Morgan operations centre there. It wasn’t Henry V’s St Crispin’s Day speech, but it may well go down as a watershed moment in the history of the UK financial services sector. Osborne is […]
IPS 2013 KPMG Daily Show Reports
Download daily International Payment Summit 2013 reports from KPMG
Competition regulation will stifle payments innovation
Proposed policies intended to promote competion in payments could stifle innovation and standardisation in the payments and transaction banking sectors, according to a partner in a leading law firm. Dermot Turing, partner in the international financial institutions and markets group at Clifford Chance, told delegates at the International Payments Summit in London that moves by […]
Venn Partners unveils structured products risk tool
Credit advisory and investment partnership Venn Partners has launched Venn Risk Analytics, a financial analysis platform that it says will provide an independent and transparent approach to the analysis and valuation of structure finance products.
Mirror, mirror: how does your risk data look?
Following the release of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Principles for Effective Risk Data Aggregation, middle and back office professionals in major financial centres now find themselves with a number of difficult questions, that senior management must be able to answer and evidence.
Citi sets out segregated collateral service
As tough new rules requiring the collateralisation of OTC derivatives take hold in Europe and the US, Citi has retooled its OpenInvestor investment services to include segregated collateral custody accounts – a move the bank says will help mitigate counterparty risk and improve collateral efficiency.
AMLD IV: Prove you’re doing it right
Anti-Money Laundering systems and controls continue to make news in the wake of the high profile failures of 2012. On 5 February, the proposal for the updated EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive was finally released. The proposal imposes a number of new requirements significantly increasing the scope and volume of firms’ KYC processes likely to be required by 2014.
Riding the OTC rollercoaster
As new rules for OTC derivatives take hold in Europe and in the US, banks and asset managers face a complex cocktail of mandatory clearing, reporting and increased collateral requirements.
Regulating the -IBORs: a global view of benchmarks?
Benchmark manipulation and fallout from it is not new news, but the global drive to regulate benchmarks is. Europe has made the first move to controlling benchmark manipulation but global co-ordination is needed to create an approach that works for everyone.
Finland’s Alandsbanken adopts SunGard risk management tools
Nordic bank Alandsbanken has chosen risk management tools from SunGard, which it says will help the bank to comply with new financial regulations. SunGard’s Ambit Risk and Ambit Performance products will be used by the bank to manage interest rate and liquidity risk and help the bank keep track of its balance sheet.
Mizuho adopts Basel III compliance toolkit as rules tighten
Japan’s Mizuho International has adopted the common reporting, financial reporting and liquidity coverage ratio modules of Wolters Kluwer’s Basel III toolkit, which is designed to help banks cope as regulators tighten the screws on the banking sector’s capital requirements.
CME Group partners with MarkitServ for OTC FX clearing
US derivatives giant CME Group and OTC trade processing service MarkitServ have connected to support clearing for OTC FX transactions, ahead of new regulations in the US and Europe on the central clearing of OTC contracts.
Equens offers SEPA support to Dutch businesses
European payment processor Equens plans to offer a number of services to the Dutch business community to support them in the migration to Single Euro Payments Area formats
Avoiding spreadsheet Hell
The JP Morgan Task Force Report into its Chief Investment Office’s $6 billion-plus loss found the bank’s Value at Risk was being calculated with an Excel spreadsheet that “required time-consuming manual inputs to entries and formulas, which increased the potential for errors”.
FSA’s swansong opens a fast track for new entrant banks
In future, the possibility of a bank failure will be accepted as a normal market process, and barriers to entry for new start-ups, including a removal of capital requirement obstacles, will be removed, the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England have confirmed.
FSA Libor rules to take effect from 1 April
New rules and regulations for financial benchmarks following the Libor scandal will come into effect next Monday, says the Financial Services Authority, and will follow the recommendations of the Wheatley Review.
SEPA – Time to Make the Change
The shift to SEPA offers significant benefits to businesses – from lower bank fees on euro payments and direct debits to opportunities to streamline processes.
SEPA direct debit uptake “unacceptable” says ECB
The European Central Bank says that the speed of adopion of direct debits in line with the Single Euro Payments Area standards is “unacceptable” and urged regulators and payment service providers to make greater efforts to push the instrument or risk damaging the reputation of the scheme.
CGI and Experian partner for SEPA validation services
Technology and information companies CGI and Experian have partnered to help Europe’s banks and corporates meet the requirements of SEPA, the Single Euro Payments Area, on direct debits.
Interactive Data service aims to untangle transaction tax eligibilities
Market data vendor Interactive Data has responded to the introduction of Financial Transaction Taxes in France and Italy with a new service that supports the identification of instruments that are likely to be subject to them.
RBS offers to automate SEPA migration for corporates
The Royal Bank of Scotland has announced a new product intended to help clients migrate to mandatory SEPA standards. Called the RBS SEPA Accelerator, the product has a feature that allows a corporate implementing the SEPA XML file format to independently initiate, monitor and amend file testing, validation and end-to-end simulation. This ensures that a corporate can self-test its SEPA readiness.
DTCC set to open Japanese trade repository for OTC derivatives ahead of April deadline
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation will start operating a Japanese over-the-counter derivatives trade repository this month, flowing approval by the Financial Services Agency of Japan.
FATCA: joining the KYC dots?
FATCA compliance might not need a separate programme – it ought to be covered by the same approach as AML, RDR and KYC regulations, among others.
Risk data aggregation: the great unknowns revealed?
The Basel Committee is planning to start checking on firms’ risk data aggregation plans from early 2013 but awareness surrounding the issues remains low.
Tackling FATCA compliance: using new regulations to win a competitive edge
With the January 2014 deadline looming on the horizon, financial organisations are realising that fast action is needed, and needed now, in order to be able to meet the first FATCA deadline for new account on-boarding.
New research slams “cynical” financial transaction tax
The imposition of a financial transaction tax in Italy on Friday has prompted condemnation from senior financial market observers, who are warning that the new rules could tip Europe into a liquidity drought that will damage banks and asset managers, punish traditional market participants and encourage a slide away from equities towards other asset classes.
Outsourcing: an increasingly risky business?
More stringent restrictions on outsourcing arrangements affecting all suppliers could lead to increased costs across the board for financial services firms.
Mixing up the pieces
The introduction of a seven-day account switching service in the autumn is meant to increase competition among UK High Street banks. Will it succeed?
Compliance stretching bank resources says Thomson Reuters
Financial services firms are being forced to become increasingly risk-focused due to the continuing pressure of regulation, according to a new survey by Thomson Reuters.
Data protection: the next Y2K?
Transatlantic friction over data protection isn’t exactly a new problem – the industry has been faced with pending regulations for over a decade, but the conflicting demands of European data privacy and US intelligence gathering legislation are coming together to make the issue a serious problem for banking technologists.
Bloomberg puts voice recording into cloud with Orange collaboration
Orange Business Services – Trading Solutions has launched a collaboration with Bloomberg Vault that will record voice data in real time, so that brokers can better comply with regulation on record keeping.
ABN Amro tech failure results in fine
Dutch bank ABN Amro has been fined by Nasdaq OMX Stockholm for a technology failure that led to an erroneous order entering the market.
SEPA Uncertainty
Big banks and their large corporate clients are in the final stages of preparation for the SEPA end date of February next year, but what about the smaller clients in the non-euro countries?
