Swing pricing is coming to the U.S. and the response has been a mixed bag. Discussions around swing pricing started in earnest September 2015, when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a proposal for reforms “designed to enhance effective liquidity risk management by open-end funds.” About a year later, in October 2016, the SEC […]
Featured Guest Blog: Cloud First, Faster
Businesses are openly embracing the Cloud in 2017. As previously noted in Tom Pfister’s Cloud First post to this blog, businesses are adopting cloud technologies more than ever before. However, many business people are finding the contracting process for adopting cloud services is slower and more complicated than buying installed software. Why are cloud services […]
Getting in that SEC Reporting Modernization State of Mind
As fund operations teams work through their SEC Reporting Modernization readiness, the most important task to execute, oddly enough, might be a shift in mentality. By and large, operations teams excel by executing a known process, executing it better than their peers and competitors, executing it today better than they did yesterday and with fewer […]
SEC Modernization Challenges: Data, Reporting Frequency and Implementation
An SEC Modernization Readiness Q&A with Confluence’s Director of Regulatory Reporting Operations
Originally published on Brown Brothers Harriman’s On the Regs blog The SEC finalized its reporting modernization and liquidity rules late last year. What are you hearing are some key implementation challenges for firms specific to these rules? Many firms know there will be an associated cost to their operations, but they are having difficulty quantifying […]
Need the Form N-PORT XML Schema?
Get Ready to Wait.
As SEC Reporting Modernization moves from planning to preparation, one persistent gap in those plans – and an issue at the top of everyone’s concerns – is the release of the Form N-PORT XML Schema. XML is data that has been assigned standardized tags that denote the meaning of each data item. It is what […]
Solving the Data Puzzle
How to meet the ever-increasing volume of data needs and integrate a global data strategy simultaneously
SEC Modernization has pushed the fast-forward button on the data management strategy for organizations of all sizes. The data requirements, especially for Form N-PORT, which include an increased volume of data and frequency of reporting on that data, have organizations looking at more than just the volume of data they hold on behalf of their […]
Cloud First
Over the past 18 months at Confluence, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in our clients’ readiness and willingness to adopt cloud technologies, especially those delivered by external providers. We no longer ask “if” organizations are moving to the Cloud, but rather how quickly is the procurement process maturing to support the business, technology, and operational […]
Multiple Returns: Making Sense of the Differences
As a performance analyst, how many times have you been asked by your clients, your portfolio managers, or your client relationship managers to explain the differences between the NAV return provided in the client report, and the return generated through the attribution analysis? And what about the differences between the various flavours of preliminary returns […]
First SEC Open Meeting Post Chairman White
Focus on Data, Not Documents
The initial SEC open meeting for 2017, held on March 1, was no ordinary open meeting. At only two commissioners, the SEC is at less than half its full strength. The meeting was the first since Chairman Mary Jo White left the Commission. And it was the first open meeting under the pro-deregulation Trump administration. […]
Culture Change in Fund Administration
Time to Put Away the Red Pen
It’s time for the fund administration culture to change. I remember starting my first job as a fund accountant at State Street in July of 1994 and on my desk was a mainframe computer, a PC that I shared with others in the group, and tons of green ledger paper. In those days, everyone in the industry […]
