Given the exponential growth of reporting requirements since the crisis, firms often ask: ‘Where does all this data go and who has the time to look through it all?’  In fact, recent statements by regulators have made this question all the more valid given that regulators’ data systems, it is increasingly apparent, often suffer from


2013: A very new year

Five years after the crisis started, real change is finally in store. Who is on the naughty and nice lists? In 2012, the industry saw a flurry of financial sector reforms. With over 140,000 pages of regulation produced over the past twenty four months, an ambitious but often discordant global regulatory framework has developed, leaving


RRPs: Operational deluge coming soon for FMIs

With the world’s most systemic banks having made it through the first round of invasive living wills in 2012, regulators now have their sights on the Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI). Central Counterparties (CCPs), payments systems and exchanges will have a lot to do in 2013 and could do well to heed some lessons from their


The UK’s Foresight Commission report on HFT has finally heard the industry’s call for clear, shared data standards across the financial system. However, it remains to be seen whether Europe – or the world – has the stomach to realise this vision. After a series of dramatic computer trading glitches across the globe, most recently


Managing, aggregating and maintaining risk data used to be a box-ticking exercise with easily achievable targets. In 2013, landmark new global requirements mean firms will face a big step up. Over the past few years, regulation in the area of risk management information (MI) was fairly basic. In 2011, the FSA, like their US cousins,


A long road from theory to policy

The industry has been waiting for the “high-level” opinions of the Liikanen Report, and its prescriptions for reform of the turbulent European banking sector.  The reforms, while suggestions rather than binding Policy (as Barnier continues to remind everyone) call for huge changes to how European banks operate. The biggest development of these is a Volcker-style


HFT: On the brink of definitive new controls?

Thanks to technological hiccup after technological hiccup, High Frequency Trading (HFT) remains a permanent fixture in the financial press. With each blip, regulators and politicians promise to regulate HFT, but how they are going to put effective controls in place is still an open question. Despite the noise, the issues with HFT remain the same.


Systemically Important Financial Institutions

SIFI assessment criteria are becoming increasingly stratified and are coming to financial institutions near you. Higher capital surcharges, ring fencing, ‘unplugging’ and new living will reports are all parts of a solution to combat ‘too big to fail.’ Some economists contend that the banks that are too-big-to-fail enjoy a lower cost of capital because they