Will Regulators and Financial Firms Be Ready for MiFID II?

With the Finance Magnates London Summit fast approaching, a number of panel participants and speakers at the event have given interviews to give a taste of what is to come at one of the year’s biggest events. In its latest preview, Ron Finberg, Business Development Manager at Cappitech, explains his role in the industry and his current vantage point of the overall market.

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1. What is your position and what does your role entail?

Regulators weren't any more ready for MiFID II in 2017 than the financial firms they supervise

Business Development Manager at Cappitech and am primarily involved with Capptivate, our firm’s EMIR and MiFID I/II transaction reporting platform.

2. What was the single most important event or development that the market saw in 2016?

MiFID II implementation officially got delayed to 2018 from 2017. Not only were financial firms not ready to meet MiFID II's 2017 deadline, but regulators weren't either. Headed by ESMA, the acknowledgement from regulators that they need to have more infrastructure in place to monitor MiFID II compliance is kind of a big deal in my eyes since it means they were overly hasty with preparing themselves and the market for EMIR Regulation Regulation Like any other industry with a high net worth, the financial services industry is tightly regulated to help curb illicit behavior and manipulation. Each asset class has its own set of protocols put in place to combat their respective forms of abuse.In the foreign exchange space, regulation is assumed by authorities in multiple jurisdictions, though ultimately lacking a binding international order. Who are the Industry’s Leading Regulators?Regulators such as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority ( Like any other industry with a high net worth, the financial services industry is tightly regulated to help curb illicit behavior and manipulation. Each asset class has its own set of protocols put in place to combat their respective forms of abuse.In the foreign exchange space, regulation is assumed by authorities in multiple jurisdictions, though ultimately lacking a binding international order. Who are the Industry’s Leading Regulators?Regulators such as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority ( Read this Term and are struggling to enforce and analyze data.

3. What are the biggest challenges that the FX trading community is facing? How do they affect your field?

Higher costs of client acquisition and complying with regulation, which widens the moat to operate an online broker. As a technology provider of regulation services for EMIR and MiFID I/II, Cappitech needs to have our broker customers' challenges in mind as we take into account pricing, automation and ease of onboarding.

4. What is the main message you’d like to convey to London Summit delegates?

The main message is that there are no quick fixes. As an analogy, when I traded stocks professionally for a Wall Street trading house in the late 90’s, one of the questions I often received was ‘what is the difference between what I am doing and guys at home that trade on their computers?’. My answer was and is that first and foremost, you need to view trading as a job, like any other one and that means a full day and not a few hours here and there.

There are no quick fixes

Similarly, the FX market is facing a challenging time in regard to increased regulatory scrutiny, saturated market raising customer and talent acquisition costs, and banks being more critical of who they offer merchant accounts to for payment processing. As such, there are no quick fixes and you really need to take into account how your firm is going to handle regulation, marketing, Payments Payments One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonl One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonl Read this Term etc.

Ron Finberg will moderate the CEOs roundtable panel, held on November 15th. Learn more about the entire agenda of the event by accessing the following link.