There is a danger that regulation will push financial services so far down the path of homogeneity that it hinders innovation and hurts customers, warns Robin Fieth, chief executive at the Building Societies Association.
Despite last month’s European Parliament vote, MiFID II will continue to be dogged by contentious issues and political infighting between member states ahead of the European elections on 22 May, senior financial industry observers have told Banking Technology.
Nearly three months after the European Commission’s 12 February deadline for trade reporting, market participants are still not ready to report their derivative trades and serious problems remain with understanding the rules.
The European Parliament has approved MiFID II, bringing to a close the political debate over the future of Europe’s trading infrastructure and ushering in a period of focus on finer technical details. The final vote will reflect a much more sensible approach than many had feared, according to Anne Plested, head of regulation change at trading technology specialist Fidessa.
The European Commission’s MiFID II legislation has produced a disappointing outcome for those hoping for a consolidated tape of post-trade data, while exchanges continue to bear the brunt of participants’ anger over the price of market data.
New regulations requiring financial institutions to increase the amount of data fields they have on their customer records and swingeing fines imposed when processes and data are found to be inadequate have triggered an increased focus on data governance.
New EU regulations on market making and dark pools could be damaging investor choice and forcing participants to make decisions that are not in their best interests.
When the requirement brought about by the German high frequency trading act to tag algorithms comes into force this month, market participants may well feel hamstrung by the complexity of the regime – and some might wonder whether this requirement goes one step too far …
Trading firms are still struggling with the Dodd-Frank requirement for certain swaps to be traded on registered Swap Execution Facilities. According to a survey conducted by trading communications vendor IPC Systems, 60% of survey respondents said the industry as a whole was behind on meeting the deadlines on SEF trading, though only 39% said their […]
Europe doesn’t need more trading venues – instead, it needs more innovation, more fairness, more competition and better enforcement, according to panellists speaking at the Trade Tech conference in Paris.
Despite the deep controversy created by Michael Lewis’ expose of HFT Flash Boys, global equity markets are not broken, according to a senior capital markets panel at Trade Tech Paris 2014.
While transparency may be seen as a new wonder drug that will cure all the industry’s ills, it does not come without side effects, so it was refreshing to see ESMA promoting a collaborative approach with the industry in defining the details of how MiFID II and MiFIR are implemented.
The International Bank of Qatar has installed a financial crime risk management platform from tech vendor Fiserv, which it says will help it to better manage its money laundering and fraud prevention strategy.
US financial institutions are spending more on risk mitigation than ever before, according to a new study by post-trade services utility the DTCC.
Global standards and approaches to regulation need to focus more on removing risk from the financial system rather than on compliance – but to do so international regulators will need to harmonise their efforts and embrace technology to a much greater degree.
The complexity of regulatory reforms in Europe and the US are placing pressure on the industry and may catch some participants unawares.
EBA Clearing has reported that market participants are gradually adapting to SEPA, with peak day volumes on its Step2 clearing platform above 100 million SEPA credit transfers and SEPA direct debits.
European securities regulator ESMA has published a discussion paper asking for public feedback on the technical standards that should be used for CSDs, including registration, settlement discipline, confirmation rules, acceptance or rejection of terms, as well as access to CSDs by other CSDs and market participants.
The number of central clearing counterparties is likely to rise in the near future as new entrants put Latin America, Africa and Australia on the map for OTC derivatives clearing, but with more regulatory intervention expected and unpredictable customer flows, the new venues face an uncertain future
Broadridge Financial Solutions has formed an alliance with UK software developer Lombard Risk Management under which Lombard’s collateral management system will be integrated into Broadridge’s applications and infrastructure services.
Post-trade services institutions Clearstream, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Intesa Sanpaolo and BBVA have formed a tie-up in Europe, which they say is aimed at better asset servicing n Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain under the ECB’s forthcoming T2S project.
Regulatory change in the OTC derivatives market has produced serious problems that indicate a clear need for more automation of cleared derivatives post-trade processing, according to a new report published by research house Greenwich Associates.
The Bank of England has become the first central bank to go live with an implementation of the Market Infrastructure Resiliency Service contingency system it has been piloting with Swift over the past few years.
Political turbulence in the Ukraine, Russia and Turkey this year produced disagreement between senior financial industry executives at a FIX Trading Community conference in London yesterday, with some arguing that politics should not be allowed to detract from the longer-term rise of non-western economies and others arguing the opposite.
Despite efforts to create a more transparent OTC derivatives market, market data costs have increased significantly since 2008 and the buy-side has very little to show for it, according to senior financial executives speaking at an event organised by FIX Protocol in London on 6 March.
BNP Paribas Securities Services has launched a reporting tool for investment banks, which it says will help them cope with tough new financial regulations by better monitoring their intraday liquidity.
A group of major international banks have agreed to jointly develop and use the centralised Know Your Customer Registry announced by Swift at the start of the year.
Until the world has a definitive Legal Entity Identifier, we are going to have to recognise that piecemeal adoption brings with it significant hidden costs in validating, enriching and mapping for regulatory purposes. If the total number of registered market participants is meant to include all the corporates that trade FX forwards, we are far short.
The Prudential Regulatory Authority has set out a series of requirements for non-EU banks who want to do business in the UK.
In addition to the regulatory system changes, what would the technological and infrastructure challenges of such a ruling be?
Swift has announced the availability of a cloud-based application designed to eases the client onboarding process between financial institutions and their clients. First outlined at the Sibos 2012 event in Osaka, the MyStandards Readiness Portal, is backed by some big names in the business – HSBC, Citi and Clearstream spoke at a Standards Forum session […]
State Bank of India has chosen tools for its new Chinese branch in the northeastern port city of Tianjin from Wolters Kluwer, which it says will help the bank deal with China’s regulatory reporting requirements.
EBA Clearing, the European payment services provider owned by 62 European banks, has reported that its MyBank Mandate pilot scheme, which allows online merchants, public institutions and utility companies in Europe to collect SEPA direct debits online, has passed the first and second phases of testing before it launches later this year.
Etrali Trading Solutions has rolled out its mobile voice recording service in Japan, allowing financial institutions to meet FSA regulations in the country. Etrali’s solution is SIM-based, and is already being used in Europe and the US.
Greece’s Hellenic Exchanges Group, which runs the Athens Stock Exchange and Athens Derivatives Exchange, has chosen to buy services from the London Stock Exchange to help it cope with tough new European trade reporting rules.
Europe’s trade repositories have reported a largely smooth transition, following the deadline under EMIR on 12 February – but behind the scenes deep questions remain about the viability of the European Commission’s ambitious derivatives reform.
Revelations that Barclays customer data was being sold on the black market to corrupt City traders have caused the bank some embarrassment over the weekend– but the incident raises more questions than it answers, according to observers.
The Dodd-Frank Act launched the acronym SEF into the alphabet soup of modern capital markets, After three years of repeated discussions, consultations, submissions and furious wrangling, Swap Execution Facilities finally come into operation this week.
In the wake of scandals involving manipulation of market indices, can statistical learning theory be used to detect and fix anomalies in Libor and other market indices?
A week before the final reporting deadline for the European Commission’s EMIR regulation, tech firms are making a last push to get OTC trade reporting up and running.
Switzerland’s SIX Financial Information has begun delivering FATCA tax information to the US Inland Revenue Service, ahead of the controversial extraterritorial tax’s reporting deadline in July.
