Two of the major overseers of financial markets — the SEC and the CFTC — appear to be in a bureaucratic tug-of-war when it comes to the regulatory oversight of emerging digital assets, and former CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo is proposing that the agencies work together to co-create a crypto bureau. In addition, an… Read More >>
Navigating GIPS, SEC & ESG Rules: Q&A with Confluence
(Regulatory and industry standards compliance concerns are hitting home for many securities firms, and Kate Maryniak, head of product management for Revolution at Confluence Technologies, spoke with FTF News about them in the second half of our recent Q&A. Maryniak, who originally joined StatPro in 2001, has served in many client-facing roles to help deliver… Read More >>
JPMorgan Fined $200M for Skipping Digital Recordkeeping
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is paying a hefty $200 million in fines to the SEC and the CFTC on charges that it failed to retain and store trading-related digital communication records of staff members of JPMorgan Securities (JPMS), a broker-dealer subsidiary of the financial services giant. JPMorgan will be paying $125 million to the SEC… Read More >>
NatWest Bank Fined $352M via Money Laundering Case
U.K. financial institution National Westminster Bank has been fined £264.8 million ($352.7 million) after being convicted for breaches of money laundering regulation in a criminal case led by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a key financial services regulator. The fine follows a guilty plea filed by NatWest officials in early October via Westminster Magistrates Court… Read More >>
Wells Fargo Fined $2.25M for Document Storage Woes
Ironic, isn’t it, that just when cryptography enthusiasts are touting the capability of the blockchain to memorialize complex sequences of transactions, major units of a big bank find themselves in trouble over their own record-keeping? FINRA, the broker-dealer industry’s self-regulatory authority, charges Wells Fargo Clearing Services and Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network — two units… Read More >>
AWS Outage Halted FINRA Systems on Dec. 7
Key online systems of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) were unavailable on Tuesday, Dec. 7, because of an outage at cloud computing provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) that lasted about seven hours, according to alerts from the self-regulatory organization and Amazon. AWS has become a major cloud provider for financial services firms, particularly those… Read More >>
FINRA Fines Citi for Alleged U4 Filing Woes
Citigroup Global Markets has been censured by FINRA, the financial-industry’s self-regulatory authority, and will pay a $375,000 fine for alleged failures regarding Form U4 filings for its registered representatives. A form U4 is the Uniform Application for Securities Industry Registration or Transfer. Those forms would have disclosed the Citigroup reps’ “unsatisfied tax liens and judgments,”… Read More >>
Crypto to Face New Rules in 2022: Regulators
Heavy-hitter federal regulators say new rules are coming for cryptocurrencies, the new, mostly unregulated financial sector that competes with traditional banks without offering deposit insurance, the banks’ most important protection. And cryptography has been beset by high-profile scandals that have cost some would-be crypto millionaires their entire fortunes. As well, at a time of worsening… Read More >>
Key Groups Push to Start T+1 in 2024
The goalpost for the move by U.S. equities markets from T+2 to the shorter T+1 settlement cycle has shifted from 2023 to the first half of 2024 after an outreach to the industry revealed that more time was needed to revamp and test systems, workflows, and operations to facilitate this fundamental change to securities transaction processing…. Read More >>
CloudMargin & Margin Tonic to Launch AANA Service
Collaboration to Target Ongoing UMR Calculations CloudMargin, a collateral and margin management vendor, and Margin Tonic, a service provider for collateral and post-trade operations, are working together to launch “a global Average Aggregated Notional Amount (AANA) calculation service” that trading firms can use to navigate the phases of the Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) regulatory reforms…. Read More >>