Finance News from around the World

Phishers target Adobe vulnerability

2009-08-11T01:23:00.001-07:00

Phishers target Adobe vulnerability

Phishers are sending out cleverely-constructed e-mails purporting to be from a Taiwanese bank in a bid to trick victims into downloading malware that exploits an Adobe vulnerability.

The spam e-mails contain credit card promotion email messages that are embedded with an .swf virus link, says Internet security outfit Symantec.

Recipients are able to see the bank's image at the top of the message and promotion notes at the bottom. There is also a large blank space designed to trick victims into believing the promotion content has been lost in transit.

The message contains a link that recipients are instructed to click on if the page does not display properly. If clicked on, users are redirected to a site containing shellcode in the form of a file named sploit.swf, which exploits Adobe AVM2 Scope Stack Corruption vulnerability.

Adobe released a patch for the vulnerability - which affects Acrobat, Reader and Flash - last month.

http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=20357

Dubai to construct real-time payments system

2009-08-11T01:19:00.000-07:00

Dubai to construct real-time payments system

Dubai has enacted a new Payment System Settlement Finality (PSSF) Law that creates the legal foundation for building a regional transaction processing hub for local processing of payments and other ancillary services.

The first such legislation in the Gulf, the new PSSF Law paves the way for the launch of a Real-time Automated Payments platform (Rapid) in the Dubai International Financial Centre, to provide transaction processing services to banks and their customers both in DIFC and the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Omar Bin Sulaiman, governor of the DIFC says: "The enactment of the PSSF Law forms part of a comprehensive infrastructure that DIFC is creating to catalyse the development of the financial services industry in the region."

He says DIFC has adopted legal best practices from Europe, Hong Kong and New Zealand, among others, to ensure finality of designated payments.

The legislation will assist Gulf-based companies in conducting legally sound payments within the region instead of having to use offshore infrastructures which often do not settle within local operating hours.

http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=20354

Webinar Confirmation: "A comparison of global regulatory responses to the financial crisis"

2009-08-11T01:15:00.000-07:00

Webinar Confirmation:
"A comparison of global regulatory responses to the financial crisis"

Date : Thursday, 13^thAugust 2009
Time : 10.00am (London), 11.00am (Brussels), 5.00pm (Singapore)

Thank you for registering for the FRSGlobal webinar "A comparison of global regulatory responses to the financial crisis" which will take place on Thursday, 13^th August.

To access the webinar, please click here. This link will take you to a webpage where you will be asked to enter your name, email address and a password to access the online meeting space.
The required password is: Global1

Once you have entered the online meeting space a window will pop up with the conference call details. Please dial the number for your location. At the bottom of the pop-up window, you will see an event number and an attendee ID number. You will be requested to enter these numbers followed by the # sign to access the conference call.

Add this event to your Outlook Calendar.

If you require any further information or experience any problems when connecting to the session, please contact:

Ineke Leclercq, ineke.leclercq@frsglobal.com.

AIM Building Blocks 3 & 4

2009-08-11T01:13:00.001-07:00

AIM Building Blocks 3 & 4

More developers are learning to build Continuous Intelligence applications with Complex Event Processing (CEP) software everyday. Continuous Intelligence allows you to deliver timelier, actionable information to key decision makers through real-time analytics on market, trade, transactional, online commerce or other fast moving data sources. The result is faster decisions and timely actions that generate revenue, increase customer loyalty and eliminate risk.

With the introduction of the Aleri Implementation Methodology (AIM) developing CEP-based Continuous Intelligence has now gotten even easier. Similar in concept to analytic development methodologies, AIM provides a blueprint for developers to construct their CEP applications. By combining AIM with Aleri's award winning CEP software, developers can build their Continuous Intelligence applications in a fraction of the time and cost of custom development.

The Aleri AIM Developer Learning Series is a set of webcasts that will introduce developers to AIM and teach then how to rapidly develop and deploy CEP applications using the AIM Building Blocks, the Aleri CEP software, and Aleri's Continuous Computation Langauge (CCL). Developers can then take this knowledge and build rich Continuous Intelligence using the freely available Aleri - Coral8 Developer Edition.

2009-07-27 JWG-IT research shows FSA’s failures could lead to a winter of discontent

2009-08-05T05:06:00.001-07:00

JWG-IT research shows FSA’s failures could lead to a winter of discontent

Turner’s liquidity implementation efforts fall short of Darling’s and Walker’s objectives

London – 27 July 2009. JWG-IT, the independent think-tank, has today released the results of three surveys which show that the FSA’s attempts to set and communicate an actionable implementation plan for liquidity risk have so far failed.

JWG-IT polled over 30 financial institutions and 10 vendors on their implementation readiness in April/ May and twice in July. The results showed that banks are not ready for the new liquidity regime. JWG-IT considers that the FSA’s excessive urgency, coupled with clandestine communications and failure to engage in the debate about how to deliver these controls, could have jeopardised the UK’s regulatory agenda, originally called for by the Turner review.

PJ Di Giammarino, CEO of JWG-IT, commented “We fully appreciate the desire to prevent the next crisis, but we’re concerned about the unintended consequences of this panic to implement changes that are 150% more extensive than MiFID’s but in 40% of the time.”

The Chancellor has clearly stated his intention to be at the forefront of liquidity regulation in an effort to control UK bank’s business models. The Walker review followed with a prescriptive mandate for banks’ Chief Risk Officers to ensure that they have the information flow required to control liquidity positions. This political positioning depends on the FSA’s aggressive timescales which now leave banks less than 75 work days to implement a data-intensive approach to granular quantitative liquidity risk management.

The FSA has stated that they believe the information they are asking for to be part of most firms’ existing liquidity risk management processes despite their own estimates showing that the industry has put the price tag for this regime well in excess of £2 billion. Di Giammarino commented that the announcement of an FSA Liquidity Advisory Group last week was welcome, but that its unannounced posting on an obscure part of the FSA website reflected the FSA’s recent attitude.

“At this late stage, the FSA’s efforts have fallen far short of previous implementation programmes: no programme office has been established, technical associations have not been consulted and there are no ‘Dear CEO’ letters. Perhaps, most disconcertingly, there are ever-changing data requirements which will not be finalised until September. The FSA has clearly under-resourced this change programme.”

JWG-IT research has found that overall senior management within banks are only just beginning to understand the magnitude of the upgrades required for liquidity risk. The main findings from the research include:

? Awareness. Calls to 750 individuals at 65 firms in April/May 2009 found only 41% had heard of the FSA’s liquidity risk standards consultation paper (CP 08/22) that was released in December 2008

? Systems. 64% of 20 bank respondents in April/May indicated that their existing systems could not easily be adapted to the new liquidity requirements. This was endorsed by 62% of 19 respondents at Intel’s Faster Risk, Data & Analytics event on 15 July, who indicated that they were not highly confident in their risk architectures’ capability to meet new requirements

? Data quality. 41% of bank respondents in April/May indicated that meeting liquidity data requirements would be their biggest implementation challenge. 36% of a JWG-IT workshop with 11 firms and vendors on 1 July found data to be the biggest source of implementation risk

? Controls. 33% of respondents on 1 July ranked liquidity risk systems and controls as their top issue - carrying the highest risk and requiring the most resource to resolve

? Resource. 28% of 15 July respondents indicated that no resources had been allocated to their top 3 issues of scenario/stress testing, risk modelling/analytics and data.

Di Giammarino continued “Until the implementation requirements are fully understood, it will be impossible to define the costs accurately. The back-office is already getting pummelled by new change requests. Senior management have not had the chance to solve the unknowns at the same time as coping with mounting workloads with a headcount reduced by 25%.

“The FSA have not taken the time to engage and help resolve the known unknowns. Rather, global standards are being set behind closed doors with little understanding of the consequences. When we meet with banks, they tell us that confusion is keeping them from building their capabilities.”

“There are clearly fundamental market infrastructure challenges with putting this type of regime in place and we have alerted the FSA, the trade associations and the European Commission to the risks. If the FSA does not rapidly upgrade its approach to working with the firms to establish standards for ‘what good looks like,’ a winter of discontent will descend on UK banks.”

For further information on delivery of the Walker review, see JWG-IT’s analysis report, “Winning the risk governance battle”, which was released last week. LiRAN members can download the detailed survey results here.

About Liquidity Risk Action Network (LiRAN)

JWG-IT’s Liquidity Risk Action Network (LiRAN) is now engaged with over 200 man days of collaborative effort helping to define a liquidity risk reference architecture, implementation issues league table and reference solutions for the ‘known unknowns’. Further industry workshops to address Stress Testing, Liquid Asset Buffer Management and Liquidity Data issues will be hosted by major City banks in the next two weeks. For background information on liquidity risk requirements see: www.liquidity-risk.info or www.jwg-it.eu where analysis reports are available to download.

About JWG-IT Group Limited

JWG-IT is the only financial services industry think-tank to facilitate collaborative work to resolve industry issues created by regulatory change. Based on a working model started in 2005, JWG-IT has established strong relationships with EU administrators, leading firms and companies. It is neither lobbyist nor consultancy and revenues are restricted to membership and event fees and content sales. The JWG-IT Think-Tank is designed to help members and participants manage regulatory-driven change better, quicker, cheaper and with less risk. JWG-IT launched the customer data management group and the liquidity risk action network in 2008. For more information, see www.jwg-it.eu.

For immediate release

PJ Di Giammarino, pj@jwg-it.eu, +44 (0) 7811 430 503

Louisa Excell, Louisa.excell@hotwirepr.com +44 (0) 20 7608 2500

2009-08-04 LiRAN data alert

2009-08-05T05:03:00.000-07:00

Go Here

LiRANers,

The BBA’s 09/13 consultation response to the FSA contains a great list of data issues on
pages 12-16. Thanks to your efforts and the drafting prowess of Kemp-Little our issues were included. We have loaded last week’s CP 09/14 BBA response here.

We met with the BBA yesterday and will be reviewing the state of the market implementation at our ‘Data I’ workshop this afternoon. Representatives from10 banks and 7 supply chain members will be reviewing conclusions from our previous 2 stress
testing and liquid asset buffer workshops, defining the data issues league
table and constructing the target operating model heat map.

We
look forward to seeing many of you there.

Best regards,

JWG-IT

2009-08-05T04:47:00.000-07:00

What?

JWG-IT is an independent think-tank – an experienced group of market professionals with backgrounds in leading capital markets investment firms, market infrastructure providers and analyst houses connecting the fast moving dots in a complex industry.

How?

A unique business model whereby investment firms, market infrastructure providers, professional service providers and leading technology companies work together in a collaborative, protected and governed manner.

Why?

We help the market understand the issues and make better, faster and cheaper changes that are required by EU regulation in Financial Services.

Joining:

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