Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., an investment bank, has been fined $3.6 million by FINRA, a regulatory authority for the financial services industry, for allegedly having an inadequate supervisory system in place to detect potentially unsuitable unit investment trust (UIT) rollovers, and also for failing to provide customers with accurate information so they can make… Read More >>
DTCC Tests DLT’s Usage for Post-Trade Ops
Post-trade infrastructure provider the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. has launched two experiments — dubbed Project Ion and Project Whitney — that are collaborative industry efforts to investigate how distributed ledger technology (DLT) might strengthen post-trade processes such as the elimination of manual processes in the private markets, and new securities settlement via public markets,… Read More >>
Firms Need Collaboration to Keep Up: Q&A
(In the past, some financial services firms have been known to follow the mantra of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” notes Mark Bolton, head of international sales for Gresham Technologies. Yet the financial technology landscape has been changing fast and firms will have to keep up or risk having “solutions that are unable… Read More >>
CAT Helps Sell Side Boost Regulatory Ops: Q&A
(The Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) was in the headlines last month as the SEC revised the CAT reporting timeline for broker-dealers due to the complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The new milestones for CAT reporting in 2020 are: June 22: initial equities reporting for large broker-dealers and small broker-dealers that report to FINRA’s Order… Read More >>
IHS Markit Acquires Trade Reporting Vendor
Catena Technologies Becomes Part of IHS Markit IHS Markit, a market data, analytics and solutions vendor, reports that it will be able to offer a solution that integrates transaction reporting with other post-trade and compliance workflows via the acquisition of Catena Technologies, a regulatory trade reporting provider for an undisclosed sum. The combination with IHS… Read More >>
FIS to Invest $150M in FinTech Startups
FIS Ventures to Fund ‘Flutterwave’ Financial technology specialist vendor FIS reports that its new “corporate venture investment division” FIS Ventures has launched “an effort to invest a target of $150 million in promising fintech startups over the next three years.” The first FIS Ventures investment is in Flutterwave, a Lagos, Nigeria and San Francisco-based… Read More >>
HSBC Halts Layoff of 35,000 Staffers
HSBC is putting the brakes on a layoff of 35,000 staffers that was originally announced in February, in a move to ease hardships during the pandemic. Other firms such as Morgan Stanley either have or are mulling similar halts to staff reductions. “I take the well-being of our people extremely seriously,” says Noel Quinn, group… Read More >>
Firm Launches Trading System Despite Pandemic
An Australian specialist fund manager, Atlas Infrastructure, went live with Indata’s Architect AI OMS and portfolio management solution this month despite the disruptions cause by the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the vendor’s help, completed a deployment remotely. The travel restrictions caused by the pandemic meant that Indata worked with Atlas “completely on a remote basis… Read More >>
Hosting is a Serious Business: Fiserv
(Editor’s note: Many securities firms are embracing the hosted option be it a cloud-based offering, an application service provider (ASP) model or a “something-as-a-service” implementation. While much is made about the hands-off aspects of these hosted situations, operations staff members still have a lot of interactions with third-party suppliers. Tirdad Shojaie, senior vice president, product… Read More >>
Credit Suisse Moves U.K. Prime Services to Greener Pastures
Although Britain mulling an exit from the European Union (Brexit) may be a motivating factor for many companies to leave the U.K. if the population decides to head for the European door, the decision for Credit Suisse to move its U.K. prime brokerage operations to Dublin was part of a long-term plan, according to a… Read More >>
