Data management: Knowledge is power
Standardised data architecture at financial institutions is no longer a ‘nice to have’. Regulatory pressures and headline grabbing fines have rocketed enterprise data management to the top of the boardroom agenda.
Features
Brave new worlds
International financial centres can play an important role in easing companies’ participation in new markets. Heather McKenzie looks at the elements needed to build a successful financial centre
Talking Heads: a matter of principle
Five years on from the financial crisis and banks still face a rising tide of regulatory initiatives. Daily News at Sibos asked several industry executives whether the price of regulation is becoming too high
New game, new rules: how banks can re-invent utilities
The world we know is changing. As the famous baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “the future ain’t what it used to be”. In the old future, collaborative sourcing involved banks creating a single provider to deliver ‘the least common multiple’ at a lower/utility cost.
Swift at 40: James Willis
To mark Swift’s 40th Birthday, Banking Technology is publishing a series of interviews with staffers looking back over how the organisation has changed during their time there, and where they see it developing in the future. Today: James Wills, senior business manager, banking initiatives/standards
Swift at 40: Alain Raes
To mark Swift’s 40th Birthday, Banking Technology is publishing a series of interviews with staffers looking back over how the organisation has changed during their time there, and where they see it developing in the future. Today, Alain Raes, chief executive EMEA and Asia Pacific.
Where the world is your lobster …
Rapidly becoming an international transport hub, Dubai is a thriving multicultural city. David Bannister, editor of Banking Technology, samples some of the city’s culinary and cultural delights.
Stand by for light speed: high performance computing in financial services
Most debates about High Performance Computing in financial services quickly turn into conversations about high frequency trading, but there are many more reasons for getting the best of out of systems. Electronics and computer technology have always been pushing the boundaries of smaller, faster, cheaper (or at least, ‘more affordable’) and financial services firms have always been quick to take advantage of the latest advances.
Judge Rules in Favor of Merchants, Strikes Down Fed’s Interchange Rule (August 2013)
A U.S. District Judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Federal Reserve Board overreached in its interchange and network routing rulemaking. If upheld, the decision will have huge consequences for issuers, program managers and other payments stakeholders.
Market surveillance: a watching brief
The US Securities & Exchange Commission is often accused of using skateboards to chase Ferraris in its attempts to keep up with trading houses, but less than a year after announcing that it intended to create a new market surveillance system – and six months after going live with it – its cloud-based approach is […]
Innovators’ Spotlight: Waspit Group Inc
With an evolved platform and new B2B focus, NYC firm is making a buzz in “Engagement Banking”.
Risk data: can it be both efficient and compliant?
With six months before the 4th Capital Requirements Directive comes into force, many will be asking what technological improvements will be necessary to efficiently manage risk going forward. Before they embark on a costly overhaul of their data systems, firms should look at what regulatory trends are likely to require similar changes in the future and adjust their specification accordingly.
Roundtable: the Future of Standards
Predicting the future is never easy, but trying to anticipate likely developments in a particular area is essential in order to take timely action. With that caveat, Stephen Lindsay, head of standards at SWIFT, sets a boundary on a discussion on the Future of Standards: “What we are trying to do is extrapolate a little bit from where we are now to where we might be in a few years’ time,” he says.
The battle for benchmarks: divisions in the ranks?
With lots of different regulatory benchmark efforts now underway, the industry could be forgiven for not taking a common stance. With IOSCO issuing final principles, ESMA and the EBA are simultaneously consulting on a European set of principles. Meanwhile the UK is moving ahead with its own reforms.
NCLC Attacks Overdraft on Prepaid Products Again (July 16, 2013)
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) again is urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to prohibit overdraft on prepaid products and limit the ways in which credit and prepaid may be associated.
In New York Times, Prepaid Fee Story Misses the Mark (July 2013)
Patrice Peyret of Banking Up responds to a front-page article in the New York Times, “Paid via Card, Workers Feel Sting of Fees.”
Next level: the changing securities markets
The securities markets are changing rapidly in the face of regulation and technology shifts, and none more so than the fixed income markets.
Making cross-border payments work
As the value of global cross-border payments such as workers’ remittances increases, billions of dollars are being lost to inefficient legacy systems – but that could be about to change, according to Hank Uberoi, executive director at Earthport.
Temenos: moving beyond the core
The extent to which a targeted series of acquisitions over the past few years have moved Temenos from being simply a core banking system vendor to a fully-fledged financial technology specialist became clear at its recent annual user event, this year held in Abu Dhabi.
The gathering storm
Recent months have seen rising tensions over the seemingly insurmountable demands for collateral prompted by tough new financial regulation. With US Treasury estimates ranging as high as to $11.2 trillion in stressed market conditions, some observers are deeply concerned that the industry could be in danger of sliding into a black hole
Notch one up for the War on Cash
The latest figures from UK retailers show a significant move to debit cards and new mechanisms like PayPal as consumers shy away from cash and credit cards.
Celent study says banks should put outsourced payment infrastructures into the cloud
Banks need to cross a psychological barrier and embrace the concept of outsourcing their payments operations if they are to compete on product innovation and customer service rather than simply on cost.
Remittances: a window to the future?
The $400 billion global remittances market is moving from cash to account-based transfer, but costs, regulations and new competitors are still the key issues.
Identity and mobile figure large at payments and cards event
The themes of security, identity and mobility ran strongly through the Cards and Payments Middle East conference in Dubai this week – and not just because the event itself is sandwiched between related and interlinked events focusing on Mobile and Identity.
Funds under fire
The funds industry is going through a time of great change, with a combination of regulation, cost pressure, consolidation and globalisation forcing many participants to take a close look at their business and operating models and consider what their future role in the ecosystem should be. For some, this means outsourcing activities, creating opportunities for […]
Building societies: bouncing back to the future
Harrogate, where the Building Societies Association holds its annual conference, is located at the end of a branch railway line from York. The route takes in the town of Knaresborough, crossing a picturesque gorge with a river at the bottom and the remains of a medieval castle up on the hill. Arriving at the BSA conference venue the taxi driver observed, with a distinct sense of regret, that “there aren’t as many building societies around as there used to be.” That’s true
Building a better society
In the debate about the future of UK retail banking, the role of the building society is often overlooked, but technological change is playing to their strengths.
The LEI: From interim identifiers to a global standard
It’s not proving easy, but progress is being made on the road to the development of a global Legal Entity Identifier that works and makes business sense.
Electronic bonds: fixed income trading platforms proliferate
In contrast to the highly automated world of equities, bond trading is an area of the markets that is still heavily reliant on the telephone as a a trading tool, with person-to-person calls making up the bulk of activity on bond desks.
IPS 2013 Round-up: market changing faster than players or regulators
By the standards of the rest of the financial services sector, the payments industry has always progressed at a glacial pace. For the past 10 years, the key topic at the long-running International Payments Summit has been the Single Euro Payments Area.
Welcome to EMIR: the known unknowns of customer classification
With EMIR in force, firms are now wrestling with the challenge of classifying their customers – without an industry viewpoint the dialogue could get ugly …
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 […]
Same day, same settlement?
The Payment Services Directive in Europe mandated next-business-day settlement – D+1 – for payment transactions between EC states from Jan 2012. But with some European countries already using faster operating standards, Neil Burton and Gareth Lodge ask: is D+1 good enough?
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.
Grand designs
Arun Jain, chairman and chief executive of Polaris Financial Technology, is a great believer in the power of design to transcend ordinary development work and deliver superior results – results that pay. Banking Technology caught up with him at the opening of the firm’s new design centre in Chennai.
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.
Social media: handle with care
Social media can add value for banks, but they need to be careful that the risk of damaging their brand does not outweigh the potential benefits, according to Jaroslaw Knapik, senior analyst, financial services technology at Ovum.
PFM: looking after the pennies
Personal financial management tools have spluttered in and out of fashion, but a combination of mobile, tablet and internet banking uptake may mean their time has come, Recent years have seen the emergence of a plethora of PFM tools, each of which purports to be the best way to keep track of your finances.
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”.
Cease & Desist: Ill. Gets Tough with Square and ‘Unlicensed Money Transmitters’ (March 2013)
The Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation recently released five cease and desist orders from January 2013 against six entities for unlicensed activities under the state’s Transmitters of Money Act. These six entities offer a variety of services in Illinois, including domestic and international money transfer, bill payment services and prepaid cards. One of […]
