Those that know me, know my background is in Financial Services. Some of the biggest gains that happened during the Major Mergers and Acquisition during the Financial Crisis, as outlined in "Too Big To Fail" by Andrew Sorkin, (Read The Book or Watch The Movie) were those who orchestrated the deals and got big payments (commissions). Commissions rule across multiple industries and Affiliate Marketing is a key player.
Accounting to an Entrepreneur's article, around two billion in Affiliate Marketing fees were paid in 2008, I have no doubt this amount has drastically increased.
The article deals with having your own (preferably multi-page) site and sending traffic to someone elses earning a percentage of commission.
Using these types of links was the subject of my blog over three years ago dealing iwth "Where I See The Money."
So what forums or communities exist to help you learn???
So after stepping my feet just off the “J” Train at the Broad
Street Station for my first job on Wall Street in the Summary of 1981, thirty
five years later I figure I learned a thing or two. I miss the old days when
most of the securities were in physical form. I actually help Treasury Notes in
my hand. Held them together with a “T-Pin” and walked them with an armed guard
to the FED (Federal Reserve Bank). I’m
continuing my LinkedIn Pulse first
segment in this series, “A Day In The Life Of A
Custody A/C Officer”.
Back in the day, we received so may emails we tried to read them
all, but especially the ones who subject ended with “(Read This One). Out the
first three segments I’ve done so far in this LinkedIn Pulse series, Read This
One. Risk. More of concern post the financial crisis, then pre the financial
crisis. Just a week ago today, The
New York Times Dealbook reported on how not just Corporations are going to
be held to stricter standards but executives as well. You know how deals get
struck with corporations where they get charged lesser fines (though note the
less huge) for cooperating, now they only get those lesser fines if they also “give
up” the executives and employees who are responsible. So where we thought
settlements were huge in the millions nad billions, if there is no cooperation they
will be really huge. These can avoided (sometimes not altogether) by tighter
Risk controls. There are so many flavors of risk (Financial, Reputational,
etc.). One might have thought in the past, “Oh, it’s just a loss, the company
will take the loss.”. Now, it evident someone(s) will be held directly
accountable and as we have seen, some though not directly accountable will have
to “take one for the team”.
The onus then is on each individual to take their role as being
directly responsible to mitigate risk for the firm. Everyone should always be
thinking this way, but it’s becoming more evident there is no longer a choice.
As a custody account officer servicing Investment Managers, Financial
Institutions, etc. I worked with the mindset that the onus is on me to “get in
front” of potential risk events as follows:
1.Checking
Cash Projects early in the morning to ensure that the account was properly
funded and ensure the client was aware
a.The client
could be reflecting a huge O/D at the end of the day. I need to know if they are
aware and are funding the projected O/D. If they say they have a large sale to
cover the O/D, I need to ensure that sale is matched. On Settlement day it
should be in a matched state. If not and it’s an issue with the Counter Party
(CP), then the client should be aware
2.Checking
Trade Settlement Fails for reasons, contacting the Counterparties, Initiating
Buy Ins if necessary to cover the Counterparty being short shares
3.Ensuring
Mutual Funds were moved by the required deadline for the day for proper funding
by settlement
a.Some funds
close very early and if funds are to be swept manually and the cut off is
missed those fund remain uninvested thus will not earn the fund interest which
may be very higher than the interest earned if any on idle cash.
4.Ensuring
Corporate Actions (Global & Domestic) were responded to on time, correctly
and the client was aware of their options and deadlines
a.The Client
could have elected to receive Cash on an Exchange Offer but instead the system
is showing Shares. It’s critical that the instructions given were exactly what
was acted on. It could be a major loss to the client, when trying to get cash
for those shares as the price could have changed dramatically.
5.Checking
that Redemption/Income Payments are occurring correctly on Redemption date.
It’s important when it comes to “signing your signature” which
may be authorized up to a certain amount that you question. If you name is
going on it, you need to be sure you can explain what you signed. I’m sorry,
but “Just sign it!” doesn’t cut it in our business. You need backup
documentation to support what you are signing.
It’ s important also to not just “do the work” but understand
why you are doing it. You need to understand whatever instrument you are
dealing with it. I’ve seen situations where items were being labeled as TBA’s
(To Be Announced, just before they become Pools of Mortgages), that were not in
fact TBA’s. I found out that the persons doing the work had “always done it
that way for years”. Metrics were built around this process with Reporting
(Internal & External) and it was never questions. I secured the domain name http://tbasecurity.info/ and http://mbsecurity.info/ to provide some links relative to the TBA/MBS
Process as well as Books and Videos around the subject.
As an Operational Risk Technical Analyst, I’ve produced
reporting around Vendor Risk. It’s important to know the impact of the Vendors
being used to your firm. You need to be able to access where the impact is
High, Low or Medium. If mission critical applications are being run on Vendor
Systems that are High Risk, Risk Assessments need to be done quite often.
Questions need to asked ofr the Vendor to determine what they are doing to
mitigate risk. Preliminary Risk Assessments will be key to the health of any
business.
As noted in our previous
segment, we are continuing our segment, “Wall Street Custody Middle Office –
A Day In the Life of a Custody A/C Officer. In this segment we will cover
Foreign Exchange. As noted in my online resume,
I got my start in Foreign Exchange in the year 1991. For the next five years I
learned a lot about the Foreign Exchange Back Office and interacted with many
colleagues in the Middle Office, I would eventually began to work in in 1996
after transferring from FX Support to Investment Manager Services. As I write
this piece I am literally walking distance from that location where I got my
first glimpse of the FX Support Business at 101 Barclay Street, downtown, Manhattan,
NY.
I started out in the remittance area as an Assistance
Supervisor where a lot of retail FX deals take place. I later moved to
Confirmations area and the Multi-Agreement Processing (MAP) Unit where I was
Supervisor. These groups touched more on the Custody Middle Office Business
where I would later work as an Assistant Treasurer and Custody A/C Officer. In
these groups, as FX Deals (Spots, Forwards, Swaps, etc.) were done between
brokers, confirmations of these deals were also done via phone with the Counter
Parties where the Custodian did the FX and well as Swift Messages (MT300) being
sent. Confirmations were critical because due to an exchange rate discrepancy,
the recorded conversation between the confirming parties was the only real
proof used by the FX Investigations Unit. .
As any given point I could be on the phone with say a Middle Office
Administrator in the say the Mutual Funds Group, confirming an FX Done with the
Middle Office and the FX Trading Front Office for the Mutual fund client. It was often during the Confirmation Process
it was agreed on how the client’s funds would be charged for the US portion of
the FX. We had been inputting a code on the FX Details system page to indicate
we would process manual tickets to charge the client’s account. I realized that
by putting in an alternate code you could charge the client’s account directly
via the same System Detail page. The saved the department at least twenty
thousand dollars monthly in manual processing and also made the Custodian Bank’s
Newsletter as our team earned an award. Process
Improvement is so critical in our business!
The same Custody Clients I would later serve as a “Single
Point Of Contact” were doing massive FX Deals As a Custody client purchased a
security in which they had to pay in Egyptian Pounds (EGP), they needed an
Foreign Exchange deal to cover that trade. Often they would use their custodian
bank to do the Foreign Exchange (Buy EGP and Sell USD) and cover the security
purchase. We are covering the FX part of
the deal here but we did cover some parts of the Security deal and what to
watch for in our very first
segment in this series.
Of interesting note I found later in my Middle Office
activities (back in 2006) is that I found that Egypt had trades that settled
over the weekend. The challenge here was that many Custody systems only
reflected settlement dates on Business Week Days from Monday through Friday. So
while the FX Deal to cover the Egyptian Security Purchase settled on a Monday
(crediting the clients account the EGP), the Security may have settled on
Sunday (debiting the clients account the EGP). The client’s foreign currency statement
which keeps a running daily balance, might reflect an overdraft for Sundays’
Debit, not cleared until Monday. This may result in Debit Interest or Negative
Interest. The Sub Custodian (where the settlement of Securities and Cash
actually occur in the local market) might not reflect this on their books.
Adjustment may just need to be made on your Custodian’s System to correct the
debit interest such as a correcting FX deal (Cancel/Replace) to reflect the FX
settling Friday, instead of Monday.
As moved to the Middle Office, whet I learned in the both
the Securities and FX Back Office was critical. I knew what went into setting
up a Securities Trade as well as an FX Trade because I had done it. When in a
crunch for time, I could go right to the right people in the Back Office or
even the Front Office Traders because I already had established a relationship. Whether Internal or External Clients, it’s
all about The Relationship!
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In my quest to cover “A Day In The Life…”, I present Part 2
in this series. The Overall them is
Client Service and is applicable not just to Custodian Banks Bank and Middle
Office, but many other Industries. As noted in my first LinkedIn Pulse Posting,
“Wall
Street, seen through the eyes of a Student”, I’ve have the opportunity to
see “The Street” very early in my career, and I’m happy to share what I’ve
learned.
In our previous
segment, we spoke about the monitoring of Trade activity and with primary
goal being to “get in front” of potential issues. As I thought about this
latest segments one of the things I want to cover is Relationships. I mentioned
at the end of the previous
segment dealing with locating missing funds for your client where the
Paying Agent insists they paid. So my
client, an Investment Manager, had one key question, “Where were the funds?” In
my situation, what was missing was an Income Payment in that should have been
made in cash. The amount was something like forty thousand dollars. I had to conduct a series of Conference Calls
with the Paying Agent Contacts (My firm actually happened to be the Paying
Agent in this case). Key to Client Relationship was continually keeping the
client in the loop. Letting the Client know that while I did not yet have a
final resolution, I was working on getting one.
I learned that the Paying Agent paid this payment and all
income payments directly to a Central Depository, who in turn was to then
credit the various client accounts who were holders of this security. As
fortune would have it, I had contacts at the Central Depository having worked
there as well and also I kept the contact information of key individuals. I
went through the normal channels at the Central Depository who relayed the
information that they could not find any payment that was not paid. I then used
the Manager contacts I had at the Central Depository in hopes of getting more
clarity on what might have happened with the funds. Through these contacts I found out my client’s
funds were sitting in suspense account at the Central Depository unapplied. I
had the funds credited to delight of my client. I failed to mention that client
in the past on their own opened up their own investigation with our Paying
Agent contacts as well as the Central Depository using the regular channels
with no results. You want to cultivate your relationships (keeping names and
numbers) in your career as you never know when you might come full circle and
need assistance. Those relationships were critical in getting the results that
my client was not able to get. I also failed to mention that the client had
this issue as a long outstanding issue and I took on the whole relationship
after this issue had been outstanding for a while.
I’ll repeat that it’s important to keep a Client
Relationship Management (CRM) database always on hand, which can be an address
book in its simplest form. If you regularly email your clients (Internal and
External) and sometimes there are both Individuals and Groups, you will want to
keep within your address book individual names as well as group names. In a global
environment you may have Individuals and Groups located in the U.S., Europe,
Asia, Latin America, South Africa, The Middle East, etc. Trying to remember group names for either
Internal or External Clients can be a challenge, having this info immediately
available in some email programs as soon as you start typing a name is
critical. You may have Counterparty Contacts that you often communicate with,
you may want to have a Group Name representing your contacts at that
Counterparty. Back in the early days we use to have something called, “The Red
Book”. This book contained all the key contacts “On The Street” or rather who
did business on Wall Street. The Red Book would have contacts for various
Departments. Even if the individual contacts changed, the central number listed
in The Red Book would often point you in the right direction. I like electronic
copies recorded in an address book, versus sticky notes and sheets of paper
whenever possible, ensuring that your data is backed up or archived.
Let me also mention that getting the research done and
facilitating the conference calls often happened outside of the working hours
of nine to five. As mentioned in our previous
segment, it may seem crazy but a lot of what “gets done” in our business is
done outside of the hours of nine to five. When you have a group of clients
that you service, servicing them all and just dealing with the items settling
that day, can take up your nine to five. To “get things done”, you have to,
without question, put in time way before nine and way after five and maybe even
some weekends.
I mentioned in my last segment in addition to dealing with
the client, you also will find yourself dealing with other groups. Some days
you will have to explain to the Accountant why a particular security was booked
the way it was booked. They may need characteristics to verify pricing info as
an example. Compliance Officers may want to question the details of a payment
to a beneficiary to a country on the “Blocked” list. You may be getting a request from an External
Auditor that needs an audited statement. These are the reports that have
already been validated by your Accounting Group. In addition to these groups,
you have may have various other emergency requests that come up. Investigations
alone can often take up a good portion of your day.
Stay tuned for upcoming segments where we will also cover
Foreign Exchange as it relates to our topic with Securities, Cash, Negative and
Positive Interest.
Having worked in the Back Office and then in the Front
Office within the Custodian Space responsible for Domestic and Global Trades,
Cash, Income, Corporate Actions and more, I began to reflect on my experiences
and decided to start something of a “Day In the Life Of…” series surrounding
just “some” of the aspects of the Middle Office.
As you prepare to start your day working for a Custodian
bank, it’s critical that you are mindful of the Financial Markets your clients
(in my case primarily Investment Managers) are dealing in. If your clients only
deal in Domestic Trading and you are in the U.S. then you know that most of
your trades will be settling in the U.S. If your clients do Global Trading your
trades can settle in various markets.
Because of Global Settlement, while you are sleeping say in
the U.S. you may be having a trade issue in Asia. To combat this, remote access
to your email and even possibly your settlement system is critical. Often
trades have an indicator if they have been “PreMarched” based on the system
used by your firm and in some cases if trades are not Pre-Matched, you will be
able to tell exactly why “Pre-Matching” has not occured (i.e. Counterparty
Short, CounterParty know Different Amount, CounterParty has no instructions,
etc.) When you notice these “Pre-Matching” fail indicators early you can
closely monitor those trades. If you have certain Markets that have become
problematic, you can monitor trades in those markets. (Note if certain trades
consistently have issues in certain Markets, you may want to get your Network
Management Team involved or if that is you, you may want to yourself look into
the possibility of changing Sub Custodians. I think it’s very fortunate that
you are not always locked into one Sub Custodian, but may often have a choice.
In dealing with Global Settlements, it’s good to check your
Trades due to settle soon are PreMatched if they should be before you leave for
the day, maybe later that evening and in the AM before you reach work. It may
seem a bit crazy but some markets, the earlier you detect issues the better.
You are the key contact your clients have to finding out what’s going on with
their Global Trades in their local markets (US, Europe, Asia, Latin America,
etc.). At the start of your day, your client’s key questions relate to what can
you tell them about the status of their trades. You need to be able to say if a
trade is failing, why and what is being done about it. You will rely on your
company counterparts in the local markets (settlement teams) for updates and
answers.
During this period it is critical that you have reporting in
place for yourself and your client so you can know that status of your trade
activity, cash activity (will your accounts be long or short at the end of the
settlement day), corporate actions, income, etc. Your reporting will help in
Dashboard building/Deep Dive Analysis to determine a number of things such as
consistency in trades failing done with certain counterparties or done in
certain markets, Cash Projections, Corporate Actions, etc.
It can’t be overstressed that your client knows that they
are your key priority. They need to know
you are going to bat for them to ensure excellence in client service. If you
client is an Investment Manager, when they get new clients and need a
Custodian, guess who can be at the top of the list?
When you’re looking for missing client income payments, the
paying agent insists they paid, but your client’s account never got paid,
Working with The Accountants, Auditors, Compliance and more in the upcoming
segments.
