Costco Wholesale Corp. has selected custodian bank Northern Trust to provide custody, daily valuation, and brokerage services for Costco’s defined contribution (DC) retirement plan, with $29 billion in assets, officials say. Costco, based in Seattle, is known as the world’s third-largest retailer and operates 861 warehouses, including 591 in the United States and Puerto Rico…. Read More >>
Regulators & Policies Decide ESG Plans for Pension Funds
Regulators and policymakers will have greater impacts on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment strategies of pension plans than the pushback against ESG investments, according to two recent reports. The findings about regulators and policymakers are based on the Amundi/CREATE-Research annual global survey of pension investors and their investing concerns. For the… Read More >>
FCMs Want Automation Over Headcount for Recs
Futures commission merchants (FCMs) offering sell-side clearing have been making “significant progress in automating” post-trade reconciliation since 2021 and want to apply technology rather than staff members to recs problems, according to the fourth quarter edition of the “Acuiti Sell-Side Clearing Management Insight Report.” However, firms have “some way to go to fully optimize the… Read More >>
FINRA Proposal Would Allow Performance Projections & Targets
FINRA is proposing a change to its “Communications with the Public” rule that could let its broker-dealer members send out performance projections or targets about private securities, asset allocations, and other investment strategies. While the move represents an easing of past prohibitions, firms will still be subject to the “stringent conditions” of the self-regulatory organization… Read More >>
FinTech Brief: DTCC’s AIP Services Gains Funds & Clients
DTCC officials have announced a milestone for its Alternative Investment Product Services (AIP), which has had a 20 percent increase in the number of funds to 10,000-plus unique funds. In addition, the number of AIP clients has risen to more than 2,200, an increase of 28 percent. These increases occurred over the past year. The… Read More >>
Buy Side Faces Big Risks via T+1 for FX
The push for shorter settlement cycles — trading day plus one, or T+1 — could pose major settlement and operational risks for buy-side participants in foreign exchange (FX) markets, according to guidance from the Foreign Exchange Professionals Association (FXPA), based in Washington, D.C. “The introduction of T+1 is not intended to increase FX settlement risk…. Read More >>
FinTech Briefs: HSBC’s Digital Custody Platform Set for 2024 & Other News
HSBC Collaborates with Metaco HSBC officials recently announced that the international bank will launch a digital assets custody service for institutional clients that invest in tokenized securities. “Once live in 2024, HSBC’s new digital assets custody service will complement HSBC Orion, the bank’s platform for issuing digital assets, as well as HSBC’s recently launched offering… Read More >>
FinTech Brief: SimCorp Offers Investment Analytics Platform
SimCorp is launching a cloud-native performance attribution solution that targets the “growing demand” for accurate performance analytics delivered in real-time, officials say. The new service is the first to be offered via SimCorp’s Investment Analytics Platform, the next stage of SimCorp’s performance measurement offerings, officials say. The new platform is “a calculation service … constructed… Read More >>
Regulators Unravel the Mysteries of Beneficial Ownership
First, we turn to Investopedia for a definition of “beneficial ownership.” “A beneficial owner is a person who enjoys the benefits of ownership even though the title to some form of property is in another name,” according to the Investopedia website. “It also means any individual or group of individuals who, either directly or indirectly,… Read More >>
Firms Embrace A.I. to Fight Financial Crime
A recent report finds that artificial intelligence (A.I.) technologies are not taking jobs from anti-money laundering (AML) professionals and that 86 percent of financial services professionals polled intend to increase their spending on A.I.-based technologies. In fact, the report, “Technology Transformation in Financial Crime Compliance,” from solutions provider WorkFusion and market research firm Celent, finds… Read More >>
