Since March, a lot has been blamed on COVID-19 as it has impacted most aspects of society, politics, economics and business. However, there is also radical improvement underway as firms pivot how they operate to thrive in this new normal and beyond.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected law firms in two key ways. First, they have faced a flurry of legal work arising directly from the pandemic or from fiscal measures to stimulate the economy (e.g., property tax “holidays”), on top of surges of activity that built up during lockdown. Property, employment, family, private client, commercial and corporate law are all experiencing some increase in activity—with personal injury litigation as the outlier, having experienced a reduction of activity while people are moving less and therefore having fewer accidents.
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The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) held its National Conference on Banks & Savings Institutions virtually, on Sept. 14-16, 2020. SS&C Primatics was once again honored to be a Silver Sponsor and to have participated in the speaker series as subject matter experts on CECL. Respected industry thought leaders discussed the key areas of focus at this year’s conference, the current expected credit loss (CECL) model under ASC 326, Financial Instruments - Credit Losses, and the impact of the pandemic.
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In their blog post Handwriting OCR Vendor Analysis, Cano AI compared SS&C Vidado’s AI-powered Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software against other top providers in the space. Cano AI, a consulting group focused on discovering and sharing the most cutting-edge automation solutions, filled out a generic medical document containing a variety of short-form and long-form handwritten responses like the ones processed by healthcare and insurance companies. They then submitted this document to all three services and manually analyzed the accuracy rates.
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One of the biggest impacts of COVID-19 has been on the banking sector, as indicated by the increased level of provisions for loan losses recorded in the first two quarters of 2020. Bank executives that were successful acquirers during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 and those looking to build franchise value are beginning to prepare for the potential to become active acquirers once again.
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The SS&C Algorithmics webinar “FRTB market trends amidst the Basel III delay” held on July 8th provided an opportunity to engage in insightful discussion and gain market-led insights and perspectives with a panel of risk practitioners. The panelists are close to the implementation of the revised market risk capital requirements under the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB). The session covered known and emerging FRTB challenges in the current COVID-19 climate, characterized by unprecedented market volatility and uncertainty, counterbalanced by a recent decision by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) to defer the implementation of the new standards to 2023.
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The end of LIBOR is imminent and we are beginning to see significant volumes of new issuances of both derivatives and cash products referencing risk free reference rates (RFRs). The LIBOR transition period, which terminates at the end of December 2021, is designed for market participants to prepare themselves operationally, technologically and financially for the cessation of LIBOR. With less than one and a half years to go, there are still many questions regarding documentation, fallback language, standardization, term rates, spread application, lags/lookbacks, lockouts and more. Nevertheless, market participants must be able to accommodate both LIBOR and RFR-based transactions during the LIBOR transition period.
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European regulators expect fund management companies doing business in the EU to have effective governance practices. Effective governance means having an active management team that has a firm grasp of its business, and engaged directors who are diligently exercising their oversight responsibilities. In Ireland, these principles are captured in the Fund Management Companies (FMC) Guidance issued by the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), usually referred to as “the Guidance,” or “CP86.”
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