Adriaan Kom

What happens when VimpelCom, the world’s sixth-largest telecommunications company, collides with the daughter of the Uzbekistan president and the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)? The answer is $795 million in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and global anti-bribery, anti-corruption-related fines and penalties.
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The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided today to launch a new series of four targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO II). The new operations will offer attractive long-term funding conditions to banks to further ease private sector credit conditions and to stimulate credit creation. TLTRO II is intended to reinforce the ECB’s accommodative monetary policy stance and to strengthen the transmission of monetary policy by further incentivising bank lending to the real economy. In conjunction with the other non-standard measures in place, TLTRO II will contribute to a return of inflation rates to levels below, but close to, 2% over the medium term. 
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is currently assessing applications for authorisation from all debt management firms with interim permission. Firms that were previously regulated by the Office of Fair Trading have been operating with interim permission since responsibility for consumer credit transferred to the FCA on 1 April 2014. There are approximately 400,000 people on commercial debt management plans in the UK.

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Today, KYCnet announced that they have joined the Equiniti Group. The Equiniti Group plc is a leading provider of technology led solutions to clients with complex and regulated administration needs.
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The Senior Managers Regime for the banking sector and the Senior Insurance Managers Regime both come into force today. The new regimes will hold individuals working at all levels within relevant firms to appropriate standards of conduct and ensure that senior managers are held to account for misconduct that falls within their area of responsibility. 
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Arjen van Berkum

Recently I wrote a blog on the top 15 jobs most likely to disappear. Quite a few readers asked me why bankers were not on that list. A valid and logical question. Technology is changing fast and the possibilities tech solutions bring us are innumerable, but still the world is not ready yet for an economic paradigm without bankers. Unfortunately, I might add. Fintech has set in the unbundling of banking, but are not making banks obsolete (yet). Is it in the first place because money exists? Because our payment infrastructure is too complex to disrupt? Here’s why it will take longer for banker jobs to become extinct.

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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recently published a report setting out its findings from its thematic review of the fair treatment of long-standing customers in life insurance as announced in its Business Plan 2014/15. Continue reading…

The Basel Committee today published the results of its latest Basel III monitoring exercises. The Committee established a rigorous reporting process to regularly review the implications of the Basel III standards for banks and it has published the results of previous exercices since 2012. All large internationally active banks meet Basel III minimum and CET1 target capital requirements.
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has banned Michael Ross Curtler, a former trader at Deutsche Bank AG, from the UK financial services industry for lacking honesty and integrity following a criminal conviction for fraud in the US.
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has today announced that it will pilot the publication of general insurance ‘scorecards’ on a small number of products. The FCA will collect data from firms and publish it in an easily accessible format on its website. Any interested parties including consumer groups will be able to use the information to compare both products and firms.

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