Visa Europe says that uptake of contactless payments in Europe continues to climb with more than one billion transactions made in the last year. Visa cardholders spent €1.6 billion in March 2015 alone – a three-fold increase over the same period in 2014.
EBA Clearing has published a blueprint document spelling out high-level business requirements for the pan-European instant payment infrastructure it hopes to start piloting in 2017 following consultation with a task force composed of more than 20 representatives of EBA Clearing service users.
The funds industry has successfully implemented the requirements of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive over the past year but has doubts about the use of data being gathered by regulators and question whether it is helping regulators to better spot threats and systemic risks that may impact market stability.
Target2-Securities, the European Central Bank project to harmonise Europe’s post trade infrastructure, has finally gone live after nine years of preparation. Italy’s Monte Titoli was not part of the first wave.
Tactical regulatory firefighting has distracted banks from their long-term strategic shift to an enterprise view of data. Looming issues such as the possible Brexit highlight the urgency of this task
Regulators should not define how markets are structured when it comes to innovation and open access to clearing. Instead, it should be left up to the market to define how services are provided, according to speakers at the IDX FIA Europe conference in Europe this week.
As the European Commission’s MiFID II legislation moved towards implementation of technical standards, some of Europe’s national regulators are seriously worried that mandatory open access to CCPs may not be such a good idea. Concerns about the ability to manage risk and the ability to effectively handle data were highlighted by speakers at the IDX FIA conference in London yesterday.
Global regulators are struggling to find the balance between recognising each other’s existence and learning to harmonise and coordinate their activities, and protecting domestic national economic stability. But people who can’t accept that there will be some differences in regulation between Asia, Europe and the US are not realistic, according to Timothy Massad, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Industry association FIA Europe is calling on regulators to make changes to derivatives laws, including amendments to Basel III and MiFIR, as well as EMIR reporting obligations. The association argues that without the changes it is advocating, the viability of some of the new rules will be at risk.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Banks and asset managers are being forced to learn to live in a world of greater specialisation, as unbundling of research and execution drives greater competitive pressure on costs. That is probably a good thing – but it will take the buy-side and the sell side in different directions, according to senior executives speaking at the TradeTech conference in Paris this week.
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.
Finnish online-only bank Holvi has partnered with GBGroup, an identity intelligence specialist, as part of a drive to ensure that all its customers are verified while reducing the time this process takes. Holvi does not operate any branches, and as such relies on other methods to confirm the identity of its customers.
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.
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.
ABN Amro Clearing will offer clearing and settlement of trades at MEFFPower, cleared by BME Clearing. The Spanish Power derivatives market is one of the top five markets in Europe and has experienced great growth in the past decade. The maturities offered by ABN Amro Clearing as swaps and futures will be: annual, quarter, months, weeks, week-ends and […]
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.
Tungsten Bank can now provide banking services in Germany, France and Italy following approval from the UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority
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.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Bucharest Stock Exchange are seeking to attract international investors to the Romanian stock market, following the launch of an ambitious government reform programme aimed at getting the country upgraded from frontier to emerging market status.
Dutch state-owned bank SNS is to upgrade its treasury and risk infrastructure using services from vendor SunGard. The bank wants to centralise its credit and market risk management, including initial margin and potential future exposure, in view of Basel requirements which oblige banks to adhere to higher standards of record keeping and transparency.
The UK’s Payments Council has selected Swift to build the country’s new central infrastructure platform in preparation for the next phase of SEPA regulation in 2016, through the provision of an automated central infrastructure platform for collection and maintenance of UK-specific SEPA routing data.
London-based Orwell Group, founded in 2005, has launched a pan-European current account called Ipagoo in the UK, France, Spain and Italy. The product aims to take on services provided by traditional banks, using open architecture software and promising consumers greater choice and less hassle.
Finland’s central securities depository Euroclear Finland has just completed the first stage of a major project to completely replace its securities processing infrastructure. The CSD says the move is part of its preparations for T2S, the European Central Bank project to harmonise Europe’s post trade infrastructure.
Swiss post-trade specialist SIX Securities Services is planning to establish a central trade repository for derivatives transactions in Switzerland, using the London Stock Exchange’s UnaVista platform. The platform is being built to allow Swiss customers to report under the Swiss Financial Market Infrastructure Act, which is currently in parliamentary consultation.
A renewed push by a group of 11 European countries could see a controversial Financial Transaction Tax introduced across the EU in less than 12 months, with harmful effects on securities markets and extraterritorial repercussions – even in countries which have not signed up, such as the UK.
Italian banks are preparing for T2S, as Europe seeks to reform its cross-border trading infrastructure and bring down barriers between EU countries. The preparations are driving smaller regional banks to make deals with larger global banks as they prepare for implementation in June.
BNY Mellon and State Street have announced a collaboration with Eurex Clearing, the subsidiary of Deutsche Börse Group, to enhance the Eurex service to meet the needs of beneficial owners, and explore expanding its geographic reach into the US.
Iceland’s Reikninstofa Bankanna, which is jointly owned by the three main banks in Iceland, has opted for a full core bank replacement project which it says will help it to slash its costs and bring new services to the market more quickly.
Switzerland’s SIX Payment Services has begun distributing the country’s first contactless debit cards, through a partnership with local bank Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, based in Aargau. The project, which began in December, replaces the bank’s entire portfolio of 22,000 debit cards with dual interface V PAY cards that enable contactless and regular transactions.
The European Securities and Markets Authority says that crowdfunding platforms are incentivised to operate in a way that they fall outside existing regulations, which is holding back their growth and increasing risks for investors.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has made a series of internal promotions in its EMEA Global Transaction Services team.
Euronext is planning to launch a new service that would allow derivatives to be reported to Euronext and cleared by LCH. Clearnet. The new service will use the Tradexpress platform built by vendor Cinnober, and is due to go live in spring 2015.
Spain’s BME is poised to open a new trading route from London to Madrid, which it says will increase the speed of access to the Spanish stock market for investors in London.
The replacement of business processes based on paper documents with the exchange of information in electronic form is a highly beneficial global trend, and the competitiveness of Europe’s economic activity will benefit from this migration.
