Financial Services

Priorities Letter Outlines Areas of Focus Each year, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) shares its regulatory and examination priorities for the coming year, highlighting both new and continuing areas of focus. In this post, experts from Venable LLP provide an overview of the most significant areas addressed in the 2018 letter. with co-authors D. E. (Ed) Wilson, Jr., Andrew...

Why "Minimal Viable Compliance" Can’t Be the Goal Major regulatory deadlines often lead firms to settle for minimum viable compliance – taking whatever action is needed to avoid regulatory scrutiny, regardless of the cost. But this approach inevitably leads to an inefficient, patchwork approach to compliance, where new procedures are created for each new regulation. As firms move past the...

Key Concerns for Private Funds in 2018 with co-authors Joshua M. Newville, Michael R. Hackett, Anthony Drenzek, William Dalsen, Alexandra V. Bargoot, Brian Hooven and Lucy Wolf With the public equity markets at an all-time high and private equity fundraising setting new records, it might seem counterintuitive to forecast litigation and regulatory risks. The opposite is true. Disputes typically follow capital, and the steeper the growth curve, the...

QDD (or Qualified Derivatives Dealers) is the latest set of requirements for broker-dealers and banks to apply for if they’d like to avoid the barrage of withholding taxes that have been set forth by the IRS – including the hotly debated 871(m), which sets a transaction tax on equity-linked derivatives with underlying assets as American instruments. And while QDD may...

Business needs in the 21st century are far more complex than just one general policy will cover. We live in a “sue crazy” culture and the reality is there are just as many people looking to nail it to the corporation as there are happy consumers eager for your product. We hope this guide helps.

A new revenue recognition standard set for implementation in December, ASC 606, is set to shake up the asset management industry.

What Money Laundering Looks Like in Community Banks Although they generally have smaller compliance teams and budgets, the nation’s community banks face the same arduous compliance challenges as their larger bank counterparts. Artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions can greatly assist community banks by detecting suspicious entities and transactions in an effort to improve regulatory compliance and AML investigation efficiency....

A Much-Needed Intelligent Approach to Segmentation Anti-money laundering (AML) is a complex and persistent challenge for financial institutions. AI is transforming key elements of the AML workflow and delivering an order of magnitude in performance improvements in the process. Money laundering has become the leading source of compliance fines for North American and European institutions. In 2016 alone, regulators levied...

Post 2008, banks operate in an atmosphere of increased compliance and shifting regulation. Broker-dealers and big banks need to understand the risk they are undertaking by operating in this heavily regulated environment. FINRA’s 2016 Priority Letter has a heavy focus on data quality and governance; banks need to know how to navigate these new standards. Hefty fines and censures prove...

Regulators have continually penalized banks for deficiencies in their financial crime programs, and this is especially evident in the case of correspondent banking. But is there room for improvement and increased sophistication?