Post-Trade Forum

The Post Trade Forum's aim is to propagate debate and discussion between senior practitioners in Post Trade Operations in the global securities market; to bring about increased awareness and knowledge across both buy-side and sell-side financial institutions in financial products and be a focal point for firms and practitioners to air views.

Matthew Ruoss CEO at Scorpeo UK

Inaction with voluntary corporate actions can lead to mandatory retribution

Voluntary corporate actions are often considered to be an inconsequential aspect of investment management. However, given the sheer amount of money that is lost to poorly handled corporate actions decisions – and the fiduciary infractions that they may spur down the road – these activities are proving to be highly consequential. Voluntary corporat...

03 March 2020 /regulation

Peter Davidson Business Consultant at Self Employed

Is Commission Free Trading Now the New Normal?

Investment brokers are typically solicited when clients need to buy or sell stocks, bonds, exchange traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds and the like. Brokers are licensed agents from investment companies. The primary purpose of a broker is to invest funds on behalf of the client, including the buying and selling of financial instruments. A broker, o...

20 March 2019

Retired Member 

Distressed Loan Settlement: The PSA Solution

In an earlier article I suggested that we can finally address the challenge of extremely long trade settlement times in the distressed loan market (T+66 is the current average) by applying three rules for driving technology and process change. Rule #1: What can be standardized must be standardized. Rule #2: What has been standardized must be ...

07 February 2019

Retired Member 

Distressed Loan Settlement: A Time for Change

Settling LSTA distressed loan trades in the secondary market is complex and time-consuming. Unlike the par loan market, distressed features additional requirements for inventory management, due diligence and documentation. As a result, the average settlement time for distressed loans in 2018 was more than four times greater (T+67) than that of...

16 January 2019

Sally Yates Director at Xceptor

A million reasons to retrospectively review your live trade portfolio

You’re late in identifying a contractual issue on a trade and it costs six figures. You’re not quite flying blind but you’ve certainly not got 20/20 vision. In the same year, it happens another half dozen times. That’s millions. Your team tries to check but there aren’t enough hours in the day. So you’ve no choice but to roll the dice on the rest....

20 July 2018 /regulation

Retired Member 

Automation and AI key to future bank profitability

More and more bankers are suffering sleepless nights over spiralling, often out of control, costs and declining, or even disappearing, margins... And if they aren't, they should be. If they don't do something about it soon, they are going to go out of business. It is now widely accepted that banks' post-trade operations are clumsy, incoherent, over...

15 May 2017 /regulation

Retired Member 

Australian Super Assets Surge Driving Technology Investment

The Australian superannuation sector surged in size to $1.8 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2014, while contributions into superannuation funds with at least $50 million in assets were $22.7 billion during the quarter. Before long, the asset pool will reach $2 trillion, driven by rising asset values and compulsory superannuation contributions. D...

17 March 2014 /regulation

Retired Member 

What comes before regulatory compliance?

Its old news: there is a lot of effort being expended on the landslide of regulatory change. But before you can even start to consider complying with new (or for that matter more established) regulations, surely consideration needs to be given to the operational and technical processes in place today? I don’t necessarily mean basic operational proc...

27 September 2013

Retired Member 

Alternative routes to cost reduction..

Since the early 2000s financial institutions have been reducing headcount to cut costs and increase margin/return on equity. Received wisdom has it that this is the cost saving option which makes the biggest single impact. What started with headcount reductions through labour arbitrage as outsourcing gained traction has evolved to simply doing mor...

09 August 2013

Retired Member 

Static Data, a closed topic?

Static Data, quite simply information by which financial services firms can identify where to settle transactions, and indeed identify their counterparts. Then why so difficult? Many claim to have ‘globalised standardised’ reference data platforms, but with around a third of transactions failing due to static differences, and indeed in the event of...

01 July 2013