White Papers
IS YOUR TRUST BANKING SOFTWARE PRFS9 READY?
The Philippine Financial Reporting Standard 9 (Financial Instruments) is the local adoption of International Financial Reporting Standard 9 issued by the International Accounting Standards Board. It replaces International Accounting Standards 39 Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement, in three phases.
PFRS 9 is primarily concerned with the accounting of financial instruments (debt, derivatives and equity) and seeks to establish a new financial instruments standard.
CAN FUND MANAGERS SET UP MULTIPLE SHARE CLASSES FOR COMMON UCITS FUND?
As per the UCITS Directive, a single UCITS funds can be subdivided by multiple share classes. The European Securities and Market Authority (ESMA) has issued an opinion on the extent to which multiple shares classes of the same UCITS Funds differ from one another.
MOBILE TECHNOLOGY RESHAPING THE WEALTH MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY.
An analysis of mobile solutions for financial advisors concludes that applications to support client interaction and advisory services will become one of the most industry-disruptive, but potentially most rewarding developments in the wealth management sector.
IMPROVE BUSINESS PERFORMANCE AND IDENTIFY NEW OPPORTUNITIES BY LEVERAGING ACTIONABLE REAL-TIME BUSINESS INSIGHTS WITH BUSINESS ANALYTICS AND REPORTING SOFTWARE
Despite a rapidly evolving competitive landscape, wealth management firms need to adapt to economic and market developments, and continue to focus on their clients’ portfolios. For most institutions, these clients take the form of high net-worth individuals (HNIs), corporations, and trusts. Catering to the needs of these clients is a team of advisors, researchers, client relationship managers, portfolio managers, traders and brokers, that work to help clients make investments across a swath of products – equities, debentures, mutual funds, futures, works of art, commodities, fixed deposits and ETFs. To achieve the necessary portfolio growth, firms are increasingly learning to harness the power of their information – often through analytics. However, to accomplish this, they must first understand their data and structure it appropriately.
A FRESH PERSPECTIVE ON ASSET BASED LENDING (ABL)
While asset-based lending may often be considered last-resort funding, commercial borrowers of all types and sizes are using this flexible, cost-effective financing to meet their cash flow needs. In fact, asset-based lending is a $200-billion-plus market, according to the Commercial Finance Association. Users of asset-based lending span a broad range of industries, with manufacturers representing approximately 31% of the total marketplace, followed by wholesalers (28%), and retailers (17%). Based on revenues, the bulk of these borrowers (71%) are under $50 million in size. The attraction to asset-based lending is obvious. This versatile, cost-efficient debt instrument provides more flexibility than many other forms of traditional financing. Moreover, asset-based lending can provide borrowers with enhanced operational flexibility through all phases of the business cycle.
WEALTH MANAGEMENT – THE NEXT FRONTIER FOR INDIAN BANKS
With a GDP growth rate hovering around the 7%+ mark and a strong future outlook, Indias growth story is making it an increasingly attractive market for wealth management firms. This trend is expected to continue, with India estimated to become the third largest global economy by 2030. While the percentage of wealthy individuals in India is very small compared with developed markets, forecasted growth figures point toward a very high potential for asset accumulation over the foreseeable future.
India has the key ingredients of a high-growth wealth management market, namely a very large and young mass affluent segment; an increase in the wealth of global Indians; the Indian governments push to curb illicit leaks and more tightly regulate markets; and an increasing share of the organized market players (e.g., independent wealth advisors and small brokers/agents who double as financial advisors).
So it was not surprising to see newspapers reporting recently that the wealth management market in the country will have a target size of 42 million households by the end of this year (2012), as against just about 13 million in 2007.
SOUTH AFRICA: RISK & COMPLIANCE BOARD NOTICE 52
On 6th March, the National Treasury of South Africa published Board Notice 52 – the Determination on the Requirements for Hedge Funds (BN52) which came into force on 1 April 2015. Investment funds conducting the business of a hedge fund will now become collective investment schemes (CIS) and will be regulated by CISCA.
ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE OF THE FUND MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY
The Undertaking for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS) IV Directive, which becomes effective on 1st July 2011, is designed to facilitate the sale of funds across Europe and to support greater rationalization of the asset management industry. The UCITS IV initiative was based upon the assumption that existing regulation is a barrier to increased concentration within the European asset management industry. In 2006 the European Commission wrote in its white paper that regulation did not allow fund managers with funds or activities in different Member States sufficient flexibility to organize or restructure businesses. These inefficiencies and constraints are reflected in higher costs and lower returns that are borne by the fund investors.
WEALTH MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY IN TURKEY
The Turkish asset management sector is still young and relatively untapped, but is growing thanks to increased demand and first-rate service providers. There is huge potential for growth in Turkeys asset management sector, but up until recently, due to a period of high inflation and high real interest rate, the growth was weak. But as real and nominal interest rates decline because of increasing stability and the resilience of the Turkish economy towards global shocks, investors started to search for alternatives other than time deposits and T-Bills.
THE WEALTH MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY IN PERSPECTIVE SAUDI ARABIA
The wealth management industry in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) represents a roughly $800 billion opportunity. Figure 1 shows the total amount of assets in the hands of affluent individuals (with more than $100,000 in investable assets), high net worth individuals (dollar millionaires or HNWIs as those in the financial industry call them), and ultra-high net worth individuals (the UHNWIs, which have at least $30 million in investable assets). As the figure shows, wealth in the region lies mostly in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) represent a second tier for wealth management firms with roughly $60 billion to $110 billion in investable assets in the hands of the richest 10% of the population in each country. The other countries in the region represent ancillary markets, with roughly $20 billion in assets each or the amount of wealth required to make the top 50 in the Forbes 1000.