This past year was an eventful one for GreySpark’s thought leadership research practice. As always, we are very grateful to our loyal subscriber sponsors and readers, CMI Blog browsers and – indeed – to our subject matter expert colleagues across the capital markets industry, within GreySpark’s client base and within GreySpark as a whole for their commentary, feedback and general inputs into our now well-established research product.
In 2017, GreySpark has enjoyed a fruitful project pipeline in terms of helping its clients with many aspects of MiFID II. RTS 6 brought HFT and electronic trading very much into the spotlight, and our service offering approach has enabled us to assist many of our clients to document their governance and algorithms, which is a necessary requirement for all banks and brokers with an electronic business. We have also run significant projects working with clients to deliver their overall MiFID II programme, providing experienced subject matter experts in regulatory change, as well as seasoned project managers and programme managers. Implementing solutions for transaction reporting to provide transparency, and surveillance to capture market abuse, were also among the project themes that we were involved in throughout 2017.
Under MAR and MiFID II, firms are required to detect and report unlawful behaviour in a timely manner by putting preventative measures and solutions in place. To achieve compliance, first and second line surveillance functions need to be created that provide more holistic, forward-facing surveillance solutions.
While many banks are still highly focused on MiFID II, it is time to start planning ahead for the upcoming Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) regulation. The case for proactive action is simple: the FRTB can result in substantial punitive capital charges and the implementation of the apparatus needed to lessen its effects will require a large effort on the part of the banks.
Just three months remain before the rollout, on Jan. 3, 2018, of one of the EU’s most ambitious, yet controversial packages of financial reforms: MiFID II. Right across the bloc, firms are in full implementation mode, despite some requirements still being poorly understood or lacking clarity and key pieces of market infrastructure still being designed.
For those overseeing the orderly conduct of trading, the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) in mid-2016 introduced some significant challenges.
Predictive analytics is a branch of advanced analytics wherein a variety of different types of software tools can be used to make predictions about future events.
Exploring why and how buyside firms must appraise their current outlay of trade and transaction order and execution management systems used to generate regulatory reporting data in the EU as well as the technology debt associated with any legacy systems.
