Last year, the CFTC launched Project KISS, short for Keep It Simple, Stupid, an agency-wide effort to review CFTC “rules, regulations and practices to identify those areas that can be simplified to make them less burdensome and less costly.”
The industry will still have to comply with CFTC rules and U.S. law, “but we need to be able to do so in a way that makes sense and reduces regulatory burdens,” says CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo, who has championed the cause.
However, Chad Elson, chief operating officer (COO) at Crevalle Capital Management, has some reservations about how the KISS initiative has been greeted overseas by European authorities.
“You know I think that it is more of a peck than a kiss,” Elson says in a video chat with FTF News. “I think that what we’re hearing is that the coordination back and forth could use some fine tuning. It’s hard to tell who’s going to be leading that effort on our side or their side. And I think the jury is still out. I think the understanding in our business is that this is sort of the future of regulation. I gather that, from our standpoint, the U.S. were ready to engage. Across the pond, it’s not so clear.”
Elson spoke with FTF News this past October during a break at FTF’s CMD Ops 2017 (collateral, margining and derivatives) conference in New York City. At the conference, he took part in the session, “Regulators Ease the Burden,” about the onslaught of global regulation and how regulators have gotten the message to ease some of the burdens.
KISS ideas and suggestions can be emailed to projectkiss@cftc.gov or via a visit to a CFTC online site at: cftc.gov/projectkiss .
CREDITS:
Video Production: Janene Knox and William J. Poznanski, Jr.
Interview conducted by: Eugene Grygo, chief content officer, FTF News
Co-Producers: Sarah Hathaway, vice president, Financial Technologies Forum (FTF) and Eugene Grygo
Need a Reprint?
Leave a Reply