Latest Legal News: Finextra Research

UK's top court rules against Visa and Mastercard in interchange fee battle

The UK's Supreme Court has come down in favour of the UK's biggest supermarket chains in a long-runnning legal battle over the level of interchange fees charged by Visa and Mastercard

17 June 2020

News/startups

Trio of top banks join $27 million funding round in H4

Digital documentation firm H4 has received $27 million in funding from a consortium including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Linklaters.

10 June 2020

News/regulation

US regulator signals change to digital banking rules

A US federal banking regulator has called for public feedback on the use of cryptocurrencies ahead of what could be a change in the rules on digital banking.

05 June 2020

News/crime

Crypto crime reaches $1.4bn so far in 2020

Just under $1.4bn was stolen through various crypto-related scams in the first five months of 2020, according to a report from cyber security firm CipherTrace

04 June 2020

News/regulation

Westpac blames technology and human error for AML failure

Australian bank Westpac has blamed the failure of its anti money laundering (AML) processes on a mixture of technology and human error rather than any intentional wrongdoing, according to a report commissioned by the bank's former chairman Lindsay Maxsted.

04 June 2020

News/payments

Federal Reserve kicks Fedwire’s ISO 20022 can down the road

The Federal Reserve has announced it will not implement Phase 1 of the Fedwire Funds Services migration to ISO 20022 during 2020 or 2021. It confirms that it does not have any other message format changes planned through 2021.

03 June 2020

News/payments

Australia central bank mulls lowering e-payments charge

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is considering reducing the charges applied to certain payments due to the high number of people opting for contactless methods in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

03 June 2020

News/payments

ECB responds to Swift’s blueprint for ISO 20022

Under instruction from the European Central Bank, interbank payments network Swift has drawn up a blueprint designed to mitigate complications borne from its surprise decision to delay the migration to the new ISO 20022 messaging standard.

20 May 2020

News/regulation

FCA: LIBOR’s tough legacy contracts are a ‘knotty problem’

Speaking at the Association of Corporate Treasurers’ International Treasury Week, Edwin Schooling Latter, director, markets and wholesale policy, FCA, said firms must push forward with LIBOR departure projects despite uncertainties regarding certain LIBOR linked loans.

13 May 2020

News/payments

Which? intervenes in £14bn class action suit against Mastercard

UK consumer group Which? is intervening in Mastercard's appeal in the Supreme Court over a £14 billion class action lawsuit against the card issuer relating to interchange fees.

13 May 2020

News/regulation

ISX loses legal bid to suppress ASX reasons for share suspension

ISignthis, a provider of payment verification technology to help banks meets AML reporting obligations, has lost the first round its legal battle with the Australian Securities Exchange over the suspension of its shares, after a Federal Court over-ruled its attempt to prevent the ASX from outlining the reasons for its actions.

01 May 2020

News/crime

Learning from Swedbank: Scrutinise AML processes to prepare for 6AMLD

In a report released March this year, Swedbank was found to have carried out €37 billion of high-risk payments over a five-year period.

20 April 2020

Company update/crypto

CFTC charges Florida man in fraudulent forex and digital asset scheme

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, charging defendants Alan Friedland of Florida and his Florida-based companies, Fintech Investment Group, Inc. (Fintech) and Compcoin LLC, with fraudulently soliciting more than $1.6 million from their customers in connection with a leveraged or margined off-exchange foreign currency (forex) scheme.

16 April 2020

News/sustainable

BofA global environmental exec: Addressing climate change goes beyond business-as-usual

Alex Liftman, global environmental executive, Bank of America (BofA), believes “significantly accelerating progress on addressing big global issues like climate change requires going beyond business-as-usual financing to find innovative approaches that can help attract a larger share of capital from a broader set of investors.”

08 April 2020

Company update/Legal

Law firm Kemp Little launches free Covid-19 Toolkit for businesses

Kemp Little has launched a free advisory resource to help businesses navigate tax, legal and financial processes thrown into discord by Coronavirus.

02 April 2020

News/regulation

FCA head of RegTech: Prioritise female hires across the industry

Francesca Hopwood Road, head of regtech at the FCA drilled down on how the hiring process structurally worked against the employment of females in regtech during the Regtech Women’s event ‘Cracking Communications: Be effective, be confident, be compliant’.

12 March 2020

News/regulation

Transformative regulation finds its feet in 2020

The true benefits and complexities of transformative regulation across financial services is set to become reality in 2020, as firms work to prepare and implement systems to meet compliance standards while maintaining a competitive edge.

06 March 2020

News/crime

US charges Chinese nationals with helping North Korea launder stolen cryptocurrency

North Korean hackers stole around $250 million in cryptocurrency from an exchange and then enlisted Chinese nationals to help launder more than $100 million of it, say US authorities.

04 March 2020

News/Legal

Robinhood outage sees customers threaten class action

Threats of legal action are emerging across trading app Robinhood’s 10 million customer base, following a 17-hour outage on the day the stock market gained $1.1 trillion.

03 March 2020

News/regulation

Piercing the LIBOR veil: Concern brews over looming deadline

While financial institutions across the market remain outwardly confident about their LIBOR transition strategy, uncertainty continues to surround the feasibility of achieving the migration within proposed deadlines.

02 March 2020