Tim Lind is global head of financial regulatory solutions at Thomson Reuters
What were the major themes of your business in 2014?
Regulatory reform across all asset classes and financial services segments was the dominant theme in 2014 and has had a profound impact on operations as it relates to trading, data management, risk management, compliance and reporting. While regulations like Solvency II and BCBS 239 have certainly been a catalyst in terms of improving the ability to monitor risk and capital levels, development of data management infrastructure was also driven by the need to reduce cost, increase automation, and make better trading and investment decisions. Regulation also highlights the need for better data governance and integration between business silos and front, middle, and back office functions. The need to aggregate exposure and concentration risk by counterparty, country, and asset class is a common theme for both regulators and internal risk officers.
What are your expectations for 2015?
We expect regulation and compliance will continue to drive the financial service agenda in terms of new data requirements in 2015. We expect more focus on investment compliance in the asset management segment and specifically how firms assess exposure to legal entities and the complex corporate structures of financial counterparties and issuers of debt and equity. Surveillance of trading activity driven by a variety of regulations like Volcker Rule, MIFID II, and the OFAC sanctions against Russia will require traders and compliance personnel to track additional data on instruments they never had to worry about before. We also expect valuation and pricing of OTC instruments, transparency in the alternative investments space, harmonization of OTC derivatives reform in the US and Europe, and the implementation of new data standards like the Legal Entity Identifier “LEI” will also be high on the agenda for Thomson Reuters and our clients.