The UK Government has confirmed plans to introduce new legislation to amend the Benchmarks Regulation to give the FCA more power to manage and direct an orderly wind-down of critical benchmarks such as LIBOR. The new powers proposed will be available where the FCA has found that a critical benchmark is not representative of the market it seeks to measure and representativeness will not be restored.

Mid Atlantic Capital Group has chosen SS&C to automate its FINRA Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) reporting obligations. The Securities and Exchange Commission will require all broker-dealers to report equities and options transaction data to FINRA CAT at the end of the month.  SS&C will monitor, submit and correct transactional data on behalf of Mid Atlantic Capital as part of its full-service offering. The SS&C CAT Reporting Portal is a secure, web-based service that aggregates and enriches broker data across broker’s platforms and translates it into FINRA-compliant CAT reports. The Portal also provides an interactive front-end to enable customers to manage exceptions.

FINRA CAT certified more than 70 firms before the June 8^th certification deadline with SS&C as the CAT Reporting Agent.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is planning a series of virtual peer-to-peer meetups through its Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology (FinHub), with a focus on engaging the industry to inform regulatory approach. The first theme will be RegTech, with a meeting planned for 6 July, 2020. Anyone currently working on RegTech solutions or implementations is encouraged to attend, and places can be booked here.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued its second-largest fine ever to Commerzbank London due to put anti-money laundering failures 2012 and 2017, which the regulator concluded had “created significant risk”. Although the FCA raised concerns three times during the period, the bank still failed to “take reasonable and effective steps to fix them.”

“Commerzbank London’s failings over several years created a significant risk that financial and other crime might be undetected,” said Mark Steward, the FCA’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight. “Firms should recognise that AML controls are vitally important to the integrity of the UK financial system.”

The bank agreed to resolve the dispute at an early stage, which led to a 30% reduction in the fine.

Denmark’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) has reported the country’s largest lender, Danske Bank, for violating the prohibition on market manipulation. The regulator alleges that the bank facilitated “wash trades” (where the same entity both buys and sells securities) between 2016-19, as well as failing to properly monitor and report transactions. Danske’s chief compliance officer Philippe Vollot has admitted that the bank did not have “adequate market monitoring in place”. Last week, the FSA also announced that it would be carrying out a cross-sector AML inspection of transaction monitoring at Danske Bank.

An inspection report of Danske Bank published by the FSA in November 2019 found “significant weaknesses in its governance of IT security and risks.”

mBank, Poland’s fourth largest banking group based on assets, has chosen Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX for Risk Management as its risk software. The mobile digital bank operates across three markets in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The bank will specifically use the Wolters Kluwer’s solution for Asset and Liability Management (ALM) as well as Market Risk and profitability (Funds Transfer Pricing).

Specialist RegTech provider Shield has been selected by Microsoft to join its One Commercial Partner (OCP) program, which provides best-of-breed Cloud-based solutions. The partnership means the Shield platform is now available on Microsoft’s App Source and Azure Marketplace.

“With increased remote working and ongoing disruption to many business operations because of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, many firms are looking at their options for maintaining regulatory compliance and surveillance during these challenging times,” says Eran Noam, Global VP of Sales and Marketing at Shield. “As an early supporter of the Microsoft platform in the RegTech sphere, Shield is perfectly placed to help regulated firms meet these needs, as they switch to Microsoft Teams as a key part of their journey towards cloud services.”

ONE regulatory has been appointed by global advisory and family offices firm Maitland to implement R-ONE, a cloud-based compliance technology and workflow tool. ONE group provides fund management solutions including third-party Management Company, Regulatory & Compliance Advisory, Corporate Secretary and Governance Technology solutions to asset, wealth and fund managers through offices in Luxembourg, London and Zurich.

UK-based web archiving and monitoring solutions provider MirrorWeb has been selected to join the Microsoft ScaleUp programme, an initiative that gives a small number of high-growth companies access to Microsoft’s sales, marketing and technical support. To be successful, companies must be start-ups or growth enterprises at the forefront of emerging technologies, and with the potential to tap into newer markets. Fewer than 2% of applications to the program currently succeed.MirrorWeb helps marketing and compliance professionals meet regulatory requirements by capturing immutable records of their digital content and archiving their web and social media channels. Clients include Liontrust Asset Management, Zurich Insurance Group, Tesco Bank, Bank of England and the Treasury.

Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting (FRR) business has released an update for its OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting solution to allow clients to meet the Second-Generation People’s Bank of China Enterprise Credit Reference Submission, an update to the country’s credit reference system first launched in January 2020, which makes a broad range of changes to reporting and information collection procedures for personal and enterprise credit data. ING’s China business has chosen OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting to meet the new requirements.