Newsroom

MEMBER HIGHLIGHT - SER member Colleen Diles was recently interviewed by Julie DiMauro of Global Relay Intelligence Practice (GRIP). Along with Lisa Crossley, Executive Director of the National Society of Compliance Professionals (NSCP), the women discussed the NSCP’s comment letter on the SEC's proposed rule changes on Safeguarding Customer Assets. The organization assembled a 15 member working group, which also consulted its Regulatory Advisory Committee and its board members, to write a comment letter to "reflect the collective concerns of NSCP’s members." Ms. Diles says the NSCP's greatest concern is the definition of custody, stating, "We need more clarity here, in order to put compliance professionals in a better position to successfully implement certain elements of the proposed rule.” You can read the full article here which includes the Comment Letter as well as the SEC's Proposed Amendments.

MEMBER HIGHLIGHT - SER member Gerry Guild has updated his chart of US Economic Statistics for the years 2021 and 2022 for SER's library. For several years Mr. Guild has provided members this overall summary of statistics that include the dollars of outstanding, issuance and trading volume of the various fixed income markets and the equities market. You can access these charts here (2021 and 2022) or in SER's Library under Notable Cases & Other Investment Related Information.

MEMBER HIGHLIGHT - SER member Colleen Diles will be a panelist at the 2023 NSCP National Conference in October. Her intermediate session, "BD LAB: Compliance Testing and Surveillance: Regulatory Expectations", explores the development of effective frameworks for monitoring, testing, and surveillance; deployment of a testing program; utilization of testing results to inform compliance priorities and remediation efforts; and factors for continually monitoring the effectiveness of testing and surveillance practices. For more information on this session, and other details on the event, visit the NSCP website.

ROUNDTABLE NEWS - Many thanks to members Andrew Auslander and Paul Carroll for their webcast on "Margining and Liquidations at U.S. Broker Dealers." The broadcast covered margining requirements including the house requirement, Regulation T and portfolio margining; the risk management view of portfolio margin; the origin and implications of the margin agreement; and liquidation of accounts. Andrew is a financial consultant and expert witness who has more than a decade of experience in secured financing including repo trading and securities lending. He has provided expert consulting in risk management, derivatives and suitability cases and has provided expert advice on margin and liquidation of brokerage accounts. Paul has over 35 years of experience in the Financial Services Industry, primarily in financial services operational control processes and supervisory best practices inclusive of trade capture, settlement, custody and margin lending. Paul served as Vice President in Global Operations for Goldman Sachs & Co., Limited Partner at Spear Leeds & Kellogg, Past-President of SIFMA’s Credit and Margin Society and former member of the SEC/FINRA Portfolio Margin Sub-Committee. The Webcast Committee is proud to broadcast these events to SER members. Members can find the recording of this broadcast in our Library. 

MEMBER HIGHLIGHT - SER member George Friedman, Editor in Chief of the Securities Arbitration Alert (SAA), reported in the March 23rd issue, on a newly-released research paper, Tipping the Scales: Balancing Consumer Arbitration Cases, by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (“SIEPR”). The paper recommends that list selection be eliminated in arbitration as consumer-unfriendly. According to the SIEPR Study, “Industry-friendly arbitrators are 50 percent more likely to be chosen from the arbitrator pool than their consumer-friendly counterparts because securities firms are sophisticated at eliminating consumer-friendly arbitrators.” Recently, the SAA blog published a featured article by SER member Rick Ryder, with his "critique of this statistical work." Rick has deep knowledge of the history of the arbitrator selection process, being the Founder and President of the Securities Arbitration Commentator, Inc. (SAC), and owns ARBchek, an online facility for searching Arbitrators' Award histories. You can read his thoughtful analysis and conclusions on SAA's blog here.

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