We recently had the privilege to host some of our clients and Mutual Fund industry leaders for a roundtable discussion in Boston. It was an opportunity for us collectively to step away from our daily workplace rituals and talk about the future of our industry....

The SEC voted on Wednesday to delay the compliance date of the classification requirement of the Liquidity Rule in what turned out to be a whirlwind of a week for the regulatory body. With a delay now formalized, fund firms with more than $1 billion...

For some people, taking a sales meeting is on par with going to the dentist — they’ll avoid it at all costs. Avoiding the dentist due to an unreasonable fear will eventually come back to haunt you, just like skipping an informative sales call could mean...

There have been multiple developments suggesting that Rule 22e-4 (“the liquidity rule”) is likely to be significantly watered down or, at least, delayed. Earlier this month, ICI sent a letter to the SEC urging the regulator to delay the compliance date by a year to ensure firms...

As we highlighted in our last post, corporate actions play a crucial role in the day-to-day management of mutual funds as well as the Broker-Dealers, Bank Trusts and Record Keepers that distribute them. Once the corporate action blast email is sent out and received by distributors, a multi-step process,...

The House finally released a draft of their tax reform plan, and for right now, it looks like they will be leaving 401(k) contributions alone. Back in April, I wrote about how the Trump administration was looking at changing the deductibility of 401(k) deferrals as a way to...

Delta Data recently attended NICSA’s 2017 General Membership Meeting in Boston to gain a deeper understanding of what’s driving innovation in the financial services industry. The day passed quickly with keynotes, panel discussions, and roundtables with industry experts, and we gleaned some interesting insights into what the...

The relationship between mutual fund companies and technology vendors has changed dramatically in the last decade. Fund shops over this time have collectively decided that the amount of due diligence and associated costs of working with dozens of vendors was too burdensome, and frankly not...

Last April I wrote a piece on what a bad idea I thought it was to Rothify 401K plans (see “Trump Administration Looking at Changing the 401K Tax Rules“). As you probably know already, participant 401k contributions are taken out of your pay before federal...

The accurate and timely tracking of corporate actions is an integral component in the day-to-day management of mutual funds and the Broker Dealers, Bank Trusts and Record Keepers that distribute them. (We’ll refer to this group as “Distributors” or “Dealers” in this blog post.) Today...

Automated Customer Account Transfer Service (ACATS) burst onto the scene in the early 2000s and revolutionized the ability for investors to move entire portfolios between financial institutions. The technical capability and usage far exceeded the expectations set forth, and it has reached ubiquity within Capital...

The Trump administration has been clear in stating its objective to reduce individual and corporate tax rates. But to fund the reduction in tax revenue, one of the items they are looking at changing is the deductibility of employee 401(k) deferrals. The Joint Committee on...

The Problem Investment companies have long allowed some retirement plans to buy Class A mutual fund shares with no up-front commission, so investors can benefit from investing with no commission as well as benefiting from lower management fees. But during routine audits in 2014, the...

Almost a year ago I posted a blog entitled SEC, Dodd Frank, Money Market Reform and FSOC: Connecting the Dots Between the Acronyms. In the post, I expressed my dismay with the passing of the Money Market Reform (MMR) laws, and how it seemed to me...

Congress still on the “outs” with DOL pick ─ who, in turn, has undisclosed Nanny Baggage to resolve. Meanwhile, Donald still has commitment issues … If you thought this was going to be a political piece, sorry to dismay but it is not. This is...

Whatever happens to the Department of Labor fiduciary rule, the mutual fund industry is moving into a “fiduciary era.” For one thing, investment advisors hope to capitalize on investors’ heightened awareness of the role of a fiduciary. For another, the backlog of regulatory change that...

In light of the upcoming DOL Rule, the SEC recently issued guidance to funds on disclosure issues and certain procedural requirements with offering variations in fund sales loads and new share classes. The SEC IM Guidance Update appears to be an attempt by the SEC to not...

The burning issue for the mutual fund industry is whether the Trump administration will curtail or rescind the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule. The nomination of Andrew Puzder for Labor Secretary, who is anti-regulation, could mean changes to the fiduciary rule as it currently stands....

Today’s news declaring Andy Puzder as Trump’s pick for Labor Secretary does not bode well for the short-term prospect of moving the date of the DOL Fiduciary Rule. For the past several weeks, the consensus in our industry was that the date could be moved by the...

The new DOL Fiduciary rule has barely gone into effect, and it is already starting to shake things up. One of the first changes we are starting to see is a new set of mutual fund share classes. American Funds and Franklin Templeton have already...

The Money Market reforms promulgated by the SEC became effective October 14, 2016. The implications of the reforms go deep and wide, both with the mutual funds that offer money market funds, but also for the firms that offer money market funds on their platforms....

Ignites recently published an article “Shops Zero In on Fund Pricing Risk Management” about a Deloitte survey that examined what Fund shops are spending time on — keeping their folks up at night.  A breakout star this year is business continuity planning (BCP) of their key third party...

The last several years have demonstrated an ongoing focus on transparency driven by guidance and rules from the governing bodies of the mutual fund industry.  To date, most transparency initiatives have focused on Dealer to consumer transparency (404a and 408b2) and Dealer to Fund transparency...

The phrase, “knowledge is power,” takes on a special meaning when a paucity of knowledge leads to potential issues that leave a company fumbling around in a dark room, looking for a black cat, only to be saved when someone turns the lights back on....

In the last couple of years, FINRA has been taking a hard look at brokers that have been selling A shares to retirement plans to make sure they were waiving the load, if the fund allowed such a waiver. Well, it turns out that a...

The Money Market Reform (MMR) rules being enacted by the SEC have left me feeling a little like we have a cure that is worse than the disease. The SEC generally does a fair job in weighing the costs versus the benefits of enacting regulations...

In part one of this post I opened the lid on the Pandora’s Box of mutual fund share classes (from A-Z, without U), currently floating around the industry; in part two we’ll examine why, beyond sheer confusion, this marketing practice is problematic. Other than just...

Personally, I don’t like going to a restaurant where the menu just goes on and on, making me wonder if they can really prepare all those selections equally well! I also have a problem with mutual fund share classes, on a number of levels.  Like...

In case you missed this article in today’s issue of Ignites. Looks like what they examined in the “Distribution in Guise” sweep will  be covered now in regular exams of funds. This should take it down stream to some of the smaller funds as the...