The effect of the pandemic has been a mixed bag for many involved in our markets. The increase in volatility has seen a boost to trading activities and RegTech has been busy innovating to help overcome the compliance issues of remote working. With banks splitting personnel between the office, disaster recovery sites and working from home, issues have arisen that will spur technological development and system renewals.
Regulations are having a profound effect on the trading landscape alongside a proliferation of Codes of Conduct. In the UK, there are three codes replacing the former NIPS code covering FX, Money Markets and Precious Metals.
We have been seeing a lot of discussion and interest concerning a blog I penned in March last year under the title of “Beware the Ides of March - A Drama of FX Swaps Reporting”.
This March, we had a Consultation from ESMA, nattily entitled, “MiFID II/MiFIR review report on the transparency regime for non-equity instruments and the trading obligation for derivatives”, which may equally be causing this issue to be re-visited.
As is traditional this time of year, our good intentions of New Year resolutions fade to what we might expect to be dominant themes in 2020, and it has to be said that if certain plans are not yet well advanced you might want to get to it!
As we settled down to the first full working week of 2020, ESMA published the latest and final set of papers on the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) with guidelines on reporting structures. This was accompanied by the amended SFTR validation rules and a statement on Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI). The good news is that it now clarifies a number of provisions pertaining to SFTR, alongside some practical guidance.
The festive season has taken over and it is reflected in the post UK election newsfeeds for financial markets. We are moving forward into the 2020s, and people are making predictions about the new decade. But, we should not expect the exuberance, irrational or otherwise, of the Roaring Twenties a century ago!
We have moved on from the conference season which highlighted AI, Machine Learning and Algo trading as core topics de jour. Interspersed in this were concerns over information security, predictions of a greater take-up of cloud computing and regulatory attention on cybersecurity. Now we have moved well into Advent and the festive season is getting into full swing. So what has been cropping up behind the doors of the Advent calendar this year?
On 12th December the British electorate will head to the polls for the third time in four years. Each political party is asking the public to put their faith in its manifesto and to fund a splurge in public spending after years of austerity. This has sparked a broader topic of discussion in relation to (i) the extent to which the opportunity to cast our vote represents a chance to hold the conduct of our politicians to account, (ii) assess the policies of the incumbent party during the previous parliamentary period, and (iii) whether there are more efficient (and frequent) ways of making politicians accountable.
Meanwhile, today the Senior Managers Certification Regime (SMCR) comes into effect for solo-regulated firms in the financial sector.
Following two high profile fines for regulatory reporting failures, totalling nearly £62 million by the UK’s FCA, the fines prompted an interesting observation by the Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA.
Here we are … always following new market developments to inform our product development teams … and one item caught my eye in the last week:– Digital Regulatory Reporting (DRR) starring the FCA and a host of collaborative partners! As Ronald Reagan noted having seen the film Back to the Future “Never has there been a more exciting time to be alive, a time of rousing wonder and heroic achievement.”
The European Union (EU) Securities Financing Transaction Regulation (SFTR) is part of Europe’s continuing clampdown on potential risks in the banking & financial services sectors. Scheduled for introduction in Q3 2019, it requires firms to report details of their Securities Financing Transactions (SFT’s) to trade repositories. This includes a range of instruments including; Repos, Securities and Commodities Lending, Buy/Sell Backs, Margin Lending and Total Return Swaps.
The 2018 Payment Services Directive (PSD2) opens up payments markets to new, radical service providers in an aim to create a cheaper, more efficient European payments market. It provides new opportunities for third parties to access banks’ internal data in real-time to improve customer service.
