Some of the top banking industry associations may be joined together, amalgamated or otherwise merged, following the publication of the Financial Services Trade Association Review this month. The move poses both risks and potential benefits.
A ‘Babel Fish’ for financial messaging has been launched by Volante Technologies with the intention of simplifying corporate-to-bank integration and removing obstacles to on-boarding. Like the fictional universal translator from Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, the system translates incoming message formats into something that the receiver can understand.
The release in 2013 of Universal Rules for Bank Payment Obligation by the International Chamber of Commerce effectively endorsed and formalised the structure for international trade finance processes. Despite this, the volume of completed BPO transactions remains low
It seems not a day goes by without seeing those three little letters and five numbers – ISO 20022 – appearing in headlines or articles. But hang on a minute, what’s all the commotion about? It’s just another message format that I need to make sure my systems can handle, right?
The need for financial institutions to accurately gauge their exposure to myriad sources of risk has seldom, if ever, been greater. The credit crisis toward the end of the last decade must have made that clear, and if bankers managed to avoid getting the message back then, the point has been driven home ever since by regulators around the world
Eleven financial associations have published their support for a new set of derivatives reporting standards developed by ISDA, which is calling for greater cross-border harmonisation of data standards – even if that means some national laws will have to be amended.
Swift has published a best practice guideline for implementation of ISO 20022 for financial institutions, based on experience gleaned through its involvement in more than 150 consulting projects for more than 70 clients across the globe.
TABB Group forecasts global compliance spending among capital markets firms will some increase 7.5% to 8% in 2015, reaching $2.592 billion , and growing at a similar pace for 2016, driven by global regulations that require institutions to expand coverage, enhance existing capabilities and standardise compliance solutions and processes.
Karla McKenna has been named head of standards at the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation on a year’s secondment from Citi, where she is director of market practice and standards.
Irish bank Permanent TSB has chosen a regulatory reporting platform from Wolters Kluwer as part of its measures to cope with Basel III. Belgian bank Banca Monte Paschi Belgio, the Belgian branch of Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, has also chosen the same OneSumX regulatory reporting solution.
Swift is extending its Know Your Customer compliance service into the securities area, making it available to fund distributors and custodians.
Financial services firms should get a grip on their risk management and make more use of the data available to them as part of a two-way process in gaining user trust and building new revenue streams.
Regulatory compliance might be a fact of life for every financial institution, but it can be very challenging when competitive pressures come in to play. Software-based services are often now the primary means of contact between a company and its customers; IT is no longer a back-office support function
Whatever label you use, instant, immediate, faster or real-time payments have moved to the top of the agenda at every payments-related event so far this year and are sure to be high on the agenda when Swift’s annual Sibos event lands in Singapore in October. Nearing the halfway mark for 2015, here’s a roundup of the stories so far …
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has launched UTIPrefix.org, a service that enables counterparties to obtain a unique trade identifier (UTI) prefix for derivatives trade reporting.
Global interoperability of real-time payments systems will require harmonisation of market practices and standards. A group of international clearing houses, banks, vendors, payments associations and other parties have proposed setting up an activity to look at how to deliver this under the aegis of the International Standards Organisation – and set an ambitious target of collating an initial variant of ISO 20022 usage guidelines for real-time payments before the summer.
The integrity of data in capital markets – be it, for example, price data, trade facts, collateral balances, or other key business information – has long been a fundamental concern of technologists and business stakeholders. But how do we define integrity?
The Object Management Group has formed a new working group to study issues of documenting and controlling data across distributed cloud environments, a big inhibitor of cloud for those with strict data sovereignty requirements such as banks and financial services firms.
Financial messaging and data integration specialist Volante Technologies has taken a step into the world of packaged products with the launch of VolPay Foundation, a development platform “designed to ease the challenges of payment integration and payment processing projects”.
CounterpartyLink, a provider of legal entity intelligence for buy- and sell-side institutions and law enforcement agencies, has announced CPL Hierarchy Profile, a new product designed to provide a single view of the client across complex client groups.
A former head of the UK Security Service better known as MI5 says banks need to beware the danger of state agencies and others stealing or destroying confidential information.
A banking book requires a number of careful deliberations on the use of derivatives. In particular, the introduction of EMIR, Dodd-Frank and their brethren across the world has a number of important consequences for this market.
In the wake of the financial crisis, the industry has been hit hard by an almost continuous stream of conduct related issues and fines; including PPI, Libor, and more recently, Forex fixing. With high levels of media and political exposure, the industry has seen its reputation suffer
Long-term investors are deeply concerned about their ability to find liquidity, with nearly 90% afraid that predatory high-frequency traders are preying on their flows, according to a new survey by block-trading network Liquidnet.
The Banking Industry Architecture Network has announced six new members including ACI Worldwide, Atos, EY and Zafin. Its global network now numbers 58 banks, service providers, software vendors and academic partners.
As international regulators demand more detail from banks on payments to individuals and companies, the first order of business is to ensure compliance with mandates. Migrating Swift MT payment formats to ISO 20022 will allow the industry to shape the transformation of payment messaging standards rather than have others shape it – but there is a need to set timelines for implementation or cede control.
Financial market regulations across the globe are increasingly focusing on risk management. This includes ensuring it is clear who firms are trading with and for, and confirming that firms can identify the instruments being traded. As a result, the field of reference data is increasingly held under the regulatory microscope and that lens extends to the standards used to identify financial instruments, writes Chris Pickles.
Swift has added peer assessment to its Sanctions Testing service. An optional service it will allow financial institutions to compare the performance of their sanctions filters against those of other participating institutions.
Fenergo has enhanced its Regulatory Rules Engine software, used by investment banks investment banks and capital market firms for client lifecycle. The software enables financial institutions to comply with a range of regulatory frameworks based on a single, out-of-the-box repository of rules.
January’s Basel Committee on Banking Supervision report on banks’ progress towards BCBS 239 compliance threw up a telling contradiction. While global systemically important banks “are increasingly aware of the importance” of the BCBS 239 project, their sense of preparedness has decreased. In 2013, 10 of the 31 eligible banks reported they would be unable to comply fully by the 2016 deadline. This year, that number rose to 14. It is understandable that there is more work to be done, but how is it that the G-SIBs are moving backwards?
In the Oscar-winning film The Theory of Everything the lead character Stephen Hawking lays out his vision of a single equation that explains all physical aspects of the universe. This rarefied scientific debate has echoes in the more prosaic world of Transaction Cost Analysis in financial markets, where the availability of more granular data coupled with pressure from regulators is driving a whole new wave of research and analysis, says ITG’s Michael Sparkes.
Financial institutions are being urged to revisit their cyber-security following revelations that an online gang using the Carbanak malware stole up to $1 billion from banks in 30 countries around the world in a series of highly-sophisticated attacks over the last two years.
Avox, the DTCC’s legal entity reference data subsidiary, has launched a series of web-based application programming interfaces designed to support faster access to data, including legal entity identifiers, legal names, addresses, industry classifications and corporate hierarchies.
Securities market regulators are beginning to clamp down on market abuse linked to complex high-frequency trading strategies – but there is much more to be done, according to a new report by financial consultancy Kinetic Partners.
For better or worse, financial institutions are more risk averse than ever. This is the direct result of continuing and growing regulatory scrutiny over a broad range of activities, including the compliance of financial institutions in areas such as international sanctions, the prevention of money laundering, the funding of terrorism or the facilitation of tax evasion.
By facilitating payments, and clearing and settling transactions in the securities and derivatives markets, financial market infrastructures are essential nodes in a complex and ever more integrated international network of capital flows. The consequent inter-dependencies between financial market infrastructures will create new resiliency challenges
Derivatives market participants are concerned about the impact of new margin requirements for non-cleared derivatives under Basel III, with a large number unsure whether they will even have to comply with the rules, according to new survey published today by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association.
In 2015, organisations in the business finance solutions space are likely to spend significantly on business intelligence and analytics. This data goldmine can help organisations unlock hidden opportunities and insights
Fewer than a third of banks are at the implementation stage of projects implementing the Basel intraday liquidity monitoring rules that come into force next month – and most believe that industry collaboration will be needed to achieve a successful outcome.
A platform for sharing cyber-security threat intelligence among financial services companies has been launched by US post-trade utility the DTCC and non-profit security organisation FS-ISAC. Called Soltra Edge, the platform gathers data about cyber-security threats and converts it into a standardised format for sharing.
