Last month, FTF brought together financial services operations leaders, fintech solutions providers, and top-of-the-line financial consultants to discuss the state of post-trade reconciliations.
Post-trade reconciliations: The concept of reconciliations is to compare one set of records with another. Operations teams reconcile post-trade: before that trade is settled and afterwards to confirm that no mistakes (also known as “exceptions”) have been made.
While a day discussing reconciliations may sound dry, our 120 attendees had fun and made quite a few connections during the networking breaks.
The FTF ReCon Conference, London 7/10/15
More importantly, we walked away with insights into the challenges of post-trade reconciliations and exception management. Here are a few of the highlights:
New regulations have new recs requirements
In an effort to increase transparency and reduce operational risk, post-2008 regulations have rolled out new reconciliations requirements. Some of those regulations include the Volcker Rule and Dodd-Frank in the US, while EMIR and MiFIR reign supreme in Europe. Firms doing business in multiple jurisdictions must keep track of what each regime requires. As one of our speakers pointed out:
Good reconciliations means good data management policies
At the heart of reconciliations is data. That means that in order to have a healthy reconciliations process, you must be able to manage and own your data. This is the real world, and you are going to have to deal with bad data, but our speakers urged the community to focus on how to cultivate good data rather than putting out fires with bad data.
Learn more about good recs data management practices with this on-demand webinar.
Changing recs practices means changing your company’s culture
An afternoon case study traced the process of what happened when one bank set up a reconciliations center of excellence. It was not as simple as setting up processes and hiring more people to manage exceptions: to truly change your post-trade reconciliations processes, you must change the company’s cultural attitude towards governance and operations control.
But it’s not all headaches and worries. One of the major takeaways from the conference was that good reconciliations practices mean a healthier firm – and demonstrable evidence to clients and investors that you are doing your job correctly.
Want more post-trade reconciliations content? You’ve got options:
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Attend ReCon New York!
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Buy the recording of ReCon London to listen to all 8 sessions, audience Q&A, and access to the conference slides.
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Listen to our webinar: The Ins and Outs of Reconciling Complex Instruments
