Financial Services Regulation

This network is for financial professionals interested in staying up to date on financial services regulation happening anywhere in the world. CFOs, bankers, fund managers, treasurers welcome.

Marc Murphy CEO at Fenergo

Self-service portals: The next logical step for compliance?

We are currently experiencing an unprecedented series of new regulations, each of which will require the collection of new client/entity data and support documentation to achieve full compliance. The problem is that each of these regulations will dictate the collection of new pieces of data – some looking for Tax Identification Numbers (TIN) or US...

08 October 2012 /regulation /wholesale

Retired Member 

Solve classification, not just FATCA

FATCA is on everyone’s minds right now, with many financial institutions trying to figure out cost-effective and efficient ways to comply with this new IRS-driven regulation. However, it is important to remember that FATCA is not the only regulation. In fact, it’s only one of many similar regulations that are expected to descend on financial insti...

18 September 2012 /regulation

Retired Member 

MMR : Interest Only : throwing out the baby with the . . .

Interest only mortgages – the root of mortgage evil or a valid option for homebuyers? In recent months lenders have reacted pre-emptively to the proposed MMR interest only rules and restrictions by either withdrawing from the market e.g. Co-operative Bank (which includes the old Britannia building society) or limiting interest-only loans to borrow...

27 June 2012

Retired Member 

Market Risk: Basel 2.5 Final Rules-US

Regulatory Updates Rima Consulting. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System voted to publish final rules (June 7th, 2012) on market risk capital. For Banks with a high proportion of trading assets and liabilities, the final market risk capital rule prescribes methods for calculating the market risk capital requirement (Basel 2.5) for ...

19 June 2012 /regulation /wholesale

Retired Member 

MMR: Affordability : what are the hotspots?

In my MMR article in the March edition of Mortgage Finance Gazette, I mentioned how, as lenders continued to digest the 700 odd pages of the CP11/31, three key topics appeared to be the hotspots:- affordability and income verification; the advised only sales process for the majority of applicants and, hovering over all; what and when the impact ...

22 May 2012

Retired Member 

US tax payers pay for SEC phone-recording intransigence

The insider trading trial of Rajat Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs board member, gets under way in New York this week. Phone recordings are set to play a key part in this case, as they did in the earlier related trial of Raj Rajaratnam. Preceding the start of the Gupta trial, the Financial Times reported (http://on.ft.com/Lbmhn4) that Federal prosecu...

21 May 2012 /regulation

Retired Member 

EU mortgage regulation : a bridge too far for harmonisation?

Harmonisation – outside of music, a term many of us have only encountered in respect to the European Union. In many areas of life in the EU, harmonisation to improve and provide consistent conditions across the 27 member states is laudable and broadly welcome. In respect of the snappily named “Directive on credit agreements relating to residentia...

10 May 2012 /retail

Retired Member 

Decision Challenger

Two completely different news items from across the pond caught my attention last week. The failure of RBS to conduct appropriate due diligence on the ABN Amro takeover was in the spotlight again. It was announced that 17 former directors of RBS, including ex-CEO Fred Goodwin, are being sued by investors for £2.4 billion. In another major sto...

19 March 2012 /security /regulation

Retired Member 

For-bearance or against it?

So what actually are the FSA after then? Do they want firms to treat their ‘customers fairly’ when in times of temporary financial shortages, or do they want lenders and administrators to be more transparent to them when reporting residential mortgage arrears and shortfall figures? Read between the lines of the FSA’s latest guidance paper on ‘Fo...

30 November 2011 /regulation /retail

Manish Jain industry principal at Infosys Ltd

Bank Account Number Portability

Bank Account Number Portability The leading cause of this attrition is poor service. The same survey also says that nearly 60% of customers hold multiple banking relationships. Clearly, total loyalty is a rare commodity today. With the market being flooded with similar products, the choice of whom to bank with boils down to service, quality of ex...

22 November 2011