In other news, Bradesco turns to SS&C, BNY ups its FX game, MAS takes aim at money laundering, and FundGuard hires from State Street.
SEC Modernizes Fee Payments
U.S. financial markets regulator, the SEC is revising “most fee-bearing forms, schedules, and related rules” and requiring companies and funds to “include all required information for filing fee calculation in a structured format,” officials announced.
The regulator has “adopted amendments to modernize filing fee disclosure and payment methods” that will start to take effect Jan. 31, 2022, with more start dates throughout next year, according to an official statement. “Operating companies and investment companies (funds) pay filing fees when engaging in certain transactions, including registered securities offerings, tender offers, and mergers and acquisitions.”
The SEC notes that the amendments also create options for Automated Clearing House (ACH) and debit and credit card payment of filing fees and “eliminate infrequently used options for filing fee payment via paper checks and money orders,” officials say. “The amendments are intended to improve filing fee preparation and payment processing by facilitating both enhanced validation through filing fee structuring and lower-cost, easily routable payments through the ACH payment option.”
The SEC will be publishing the text of all the changes in the publication known as the Federal Register.
“The amendments that will add the options for filing fee payment via ACH and debit and credit cards and eliminate the option for filing fee payment via paper checks and money orders will be effective on May 31, 2022,” according to the SEC, which will provide an extended transition period to “give filers additional time to comply with the Inline XBRL structuring requirements for filing fee information.”
“These updates, which will be phased in over the coming years, will make the filing process faster, less expensive, and more efficient for SEC staff and market participants,” says SEC Chair Gary Gensler, in a prepared statement.
The full 432-pages of amendments can be found here: https://bit.ly/3j2Ibje
Bradesco Securities Picks SS&C’s OMS
SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. reports that Bradesco Securities, the institutional brokerage arm of Brazil’s Bradesco BBI, will employ SS&C’s MarketTrader order management system (OMS) for its trading operations.
MarketTrader will “serve as Bradesco’s core sell-side order management system, supporting multi-asset trading, FIX connectivity, IOI/trade advertisement and commission management,” SS&C says in a statement. “Additionally, MarketTrader will help Bradesco meet CAT and MiFID II reporting requirements. Fully integrated with SS&C FIXLink, the solution supports global access to brokers and institutions.”
Bradesco Securities, Inc. operates as an institutional brokerage firm, the SS&C statement notes.
Windsor, Connecticut-based SS&C, founded in 1986, is a “provider of services and software for the financial services and healthcare industries. …Some 18,000 financial services and healthcare organizations, from the world’s largest companies to small and mid-market firms, rely on SS&C for expertise, scale and technology,” according to the vendor. — L.Ch
BNY Mellon Bolsters Custody FX’s Capabilities
BNY Mellon reports that it is expanding its Custody FX offering by adding trading capabilities and “pivoting from a primarily custody-focused service model into a transparent open architecture that can be leveraged by a variety of client types for their rules-based, end-to-end transaction needs,” officials say.
“Effective immediately, clients in our FX trading programs can customize how they trade currencies through BNY Mellon, among other new improvements introduced to the firm’s Custody FX programs to increase transparency and provide more flexibility for participants,” according to an official statement.
In fact, FX trading program clients can improve large order execution via access to algorithmic execution methods for orders over a certain size, officials say.
The incorporation of these new capabilities will help users design elements of their standing orders and deliver more enhancements such as:
- Improved Transparency: “Upgraded trade micro-timestamping facilitates enhanced transaction cost analysis (TCA) for clients, providing visibility into how their instructions are being fulfilled and executed;”
- Expanded Portfolio Customization: “Clients have more customizable rules-based options to tailor their FX strategies;”
- Upgraded Asia execution capabilities: BNY Mellon has improved its “offering across APAC markets, including adding expanded benchmark execution giving clients more transparency while broadening the client coverage team throughout the region.”
MAS Unveils Digital Platform to Fight Money Laundering
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) reports that it will introduce a digital platform and a regulatory framework for financial institutions (FIs) to “share with one another relevant information on customers and transactions to prevent money laundering (ML), terrorism financing (TF) and proliferation financing.”
A statement from MAS points out that a “common challenge that FIs in most jurisdictions face is that they are unable to warn one another about unusual activity in customers’ accounts. This gap is frequently exploited by financial criminals to make illicit transactions through a web of entities with accounts in different FIs, such that each FI on its own does not have sufficient information to detect these transactions in a timely manner.”
The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s new digital platform has been dubbed COSMIC, an acronym for “Collaborative Sharing of ML/TF Information & Cases.”
The COSMIC platform is meant to “enable FIs to securely share information on customers or transactions, where they cross material risk thresholds. Such information sharing will help FIs identify and disrupt illicit networks, thus helping to safeguard the Singapore financial centre.”
The platform was co-created by MAS and six commercial banks in Singapore, according to the statement, and is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2023.
The six banks are DBS Bank Ltd, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, United Overseas Bank Limited, Standard Chartered Bank, Citibank, and HSBC. — L.Ch
FundGuard Taps State Street for New President
John Lehner
FundGuard, a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) investment management and asset-servicing platform, has appointed John Lehner as its new president.
Lehner’s mandate includes “driving the firm’s go-to-market strategy and client-facing activities including broader expansion globally, onboarding and servicing new clients, establishing new client relationships and working closely with product teams to build and roll out product strategy and marketing,” the provider says in a statement.
Lehner has more than 30 years of experience in the “investment management technology and asset servicing industry across technology, data and services, successfully building and transforming global businesses,” per the statement.
He joins from State Street where he was most recently global head of the asset management and insurance segments, investment manager services and a member of the management committee, the FundGuard statement specifies. — L.Ch
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