BNY Mellon announced the formation of a new enterprise Digital Assets unit that will accelerate the development of solutions and capabilities to help clients address growing and evolving needs related to the growth of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies. The cross-functional, cross-business team, which will be led by Mike Demissie, head of Advanced Solutions at BNY Mellon, is currently developing a client-facing prototype that is designed to be the industry’s first multi-asset digital custody and administration platform for traditional and digital assets. “The Digital Assets...

FIF Tech Specs Working Group. The CAT Tech Specs Working Group reviewed updated FAQs issued by FINRA CAT relating to reporting MENO, MEOA and MEOT events for NAV trades, CND and CMC handlingInstructions, and reporting senderType and destinationType values of ‘O’. The Working Group reviewed FIF Member comments and questions for FINRA CAT relating to mass cancellations, reporting for GTX, DAY and IOC orders, handlingInstructions for algo orders and Order Route events, and Route Modifications for retail orders. The Working Group discussed the reporting for unsolicited cancels and...

Back Office Committee. On February 16, Professor James Angel of the Georgetown McDonough School of Business will discuss his recommended changes to stock lending, buy-in and settlement rules in response to the recent trading activity in GameStop. Tax Information Reporting Working Group. On February 23, Andrew Bernknopf, Partner at the De Castro West law firm, will discuss Taxation of Partnership Equity Compensation and Carried Interests.

On February 5 FIF and the FIF CAIS Working Group Co-Chairs participated in a meeting with FINRA CAT to discuss the creation of an industry working group to address issues relating to customer identifiers as FINRA CAT starts to move forward toward implementation of CAIS. On February 3 FIF submitted comments and questions to FINRA CAT relating to the CAT transaction-reporting system and CAIS based on issues raised by FIF Members. For the upcoming week, FIF will review the updates to the Technical Specification and Reporting Scenario documents published by FINRA CAT on February 5.

On December 23, 2020, FINRA issued a request for comment on Enhancements to TRACE Reporting for U.S. Treasury Securities. On February 2 FIF held a call to review a revised draft of the comment letter on the FINRA Regulatory Notice. The next Working Group call is scheduled for February 16 for FIF members to provide any final comments on the draft comment letter. During the call, FIF members also will discuss a rule proposal by the Federal Reserve to expand TRACE reporting for Treasuries and agencies to certain depository institutions and the potential impact on broker-dealers that currently...

The series will include multiple webinars for FIF Members that will address the implementation considerations of the 898 page Rule. The kickoff panel on February 1 covered the Rule Overview and was presented by Wayne Aaron of the Vedder Price law firm in a conversation with Matt Billings of Two Sigma and Tom Jordan, Chair of the FIF Advisory Committee. This second webinar will take place today, February 8th at 4pm ET. The webinar will focus on the data: core; odd-lots; round lots; auction data; regulatory; and depth of book. The panel will include a representative from an exchange, the...

State Street’s Charles River has integrated its investment management system (IMS) with the request-for-quote (RFQ) off-venue interest rate derivatives platform, OTCX. Through the certified integration, Charles River clients can now connect directly to dealers through the OTCX platform with reduced operational risk trading via voice, chat, or email. According to a story in The Trade News, Charles River IMS users can also request prices and negotiate fix-float interest rate swaps, overnight index swaps, and inflation swaps across G10 and emerging market currencies.

BNY Mellon has partnered with Google Cloud on a data analytics model to help traders predict billions of dollars’ worth of daily settlement failures in the US treasury market, according to a story in The Trade News. The initiative will see BNY Mellon leverage Google Cloud data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies to develop new collateral management and liquidity solutions, helping clients to achieve significant capital savings. BNY Mellon predicts its new initiative will help traders predict approximately 40% of settlement failures in Fed-eligible...

IHS Markit has launched ETF Collateral Lists 2.0, the first automated solution to enable collateral receivers to proactively identify ETFs based on their risk criteria. According to a story in MarketsMedia news, with a broadened inventory of accepted securities and triparty agent connectivity to manage distribution, the lists can increase ETF collateral transparency and control by calculating daily risk scores. Prior to the availability of ETF Collateral Lists 2.0, the traditional process for selecting ETFs as collateral was often inefficient, cumbersome and reactive – lenders would have to...