A Soft Brexit or a Hard Brexit. ‘Remoaners’ vs. ‘Brexiteers’. The Irish backstop and the cliff edge. Even the linguistic impact of the UK’s shock decision to quit the European Union on June 23, 2016 generated a level of anguish and controversy that few had foreseen. Brexit, which had dominated headlines for four vertiginous years, became a distant memory when the UK finally left the European Union on 31st January, 2020 and a global pandemic began to take center stage.
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Uncleared Margin Rule – Leveraging Deadline Extensions to Create Automated and Efficient Operations
In April 2020, the Basel Committee on Banking and Supervision (BCBS) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) extended the deadline for implementing Phase 5 and Phase 6 of the Uncleared Margin Rule (UMR) requirements for uncleared over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. At this point, US firms need to decide whether to continue their work towards Phase 5 readiness or delay their program timelines to align with the new 2021 timeline.
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Broker-Dealer Technology Upgrades – Accelerating Change in 2020 and Beyond
Fees and spreads earned from capital markets activities remain an important revenue source for many financial services firms. At the same time, the market for interest rate, equity, foreign exchange and other traded products is becoming increasingly competitive. Efficient post-trade processing and enhanced automated solutions are essentials for banks to stay competitive.
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Delivering Against Changing Priorities: Double Down on Agile
The current environment presents financial services technology organizations with an opportunity to leverage their existing Agile practices and to expand their adoption to tackle new challenges that change fluidly with the economic climate and regulation. Although it can be tempting to revert to old patterns to expedite delivery, “doubling down” on the foundational principles of Agile helps maintain a focus on delivering the most critical user functionality with the optimal time-to-market.
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Building Cyber Resilience in an Accelerated Digital World
As financial services firms embrace digital transformation, detection tools are not able to keep pace with the growth of sensitive data that continues to attract cybercriminals across the globe. Cybercriminals are not too different from their bank robber predecessors who were attracted to banks for the same obvious reason – “because that’s where the money is.”
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Minimum Capital Requirements for Market Risk: The Final Word on FRTB
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s (BCBS) Minimum Capital Requirements for Market Risk (MCRMR) represent the next challenge for banks’ market risk calculations. After several years of consultations, revisions, and impact assessments, the BCBS published the final rule of what was formerly known as the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) rules in January of 2019.
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