SIFMA Vice President Snook Discusses the Operational Efficiency and Resiliency of Financial Industry

At the 2014 Operations Conference Exhibition, SIFMA Executive Vice President Randy Snook delivered opening remarks about how to increase the resiliency of the financial system amid rapid regulatory changes.

Mr. Snook stated that much of the rulemaking mandated by Dodd-Frank has presented significant operational challenges, citing the Volcker Rule and the new derivatives regime as examples of challenges that created the need for new data reporting and other operational requirements.

To ensure that these new rules are efficiently monitored, Mr. Snook said, it is important that additional technology be developed. He noted that SIFMA is beginning the process of building the Consolidated Audit Trail ("CAT"), which will establish a system to track the full life cycle of trades. To pursue CAT, Mr. Snook stated, "we must ensure that we see the elimination of older systems that become redundant."

He also mentioned the FINRA proposal of a new concept, CARDs, which calls for the development of a new system to collect on a regular basis "sensitive client information regarding retail customer brokerage accounts." Mr. Snook stated that SIFMA believes CARDs would be a "massive invasive regulatory intrusion with serious privacy and security implications for the general public" and will not support CARDs until the risks are addressed.

Mr. Snook concluded with a brief discussion of recent SIFMA initiatives, including support for a shortening of the settlement cycle for U.S. equities, corporate bonds and municipal bonds, as well as the promotion of adopting the legal entity identifier standard, or LEI.

See: SIFMA Vice President Snook's Speech.