Tabb Says Regulatory Changes Will Lead to US$206m Investment on Surveillance Programmes
With the financial services industry being overhauled under Dodd-Frank and MiFID II, new research from Tabb Group estimates that sweeping regulatory changes will lead brokers across the US and Europe to spend US$206m in 2011 on new market surveillance programmes. With hundreds of laws yet to be written and rules to be implemented, spending will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14% to US$268m in 2013.
To comply, spending on external solutions is expected to grow from 28% in 2011 to 35% of total expenditure in 2013 as brokers leverage vendors’ products to fit tight budgets and meet short timelines.
According to Miranda Mizen, a Tabb principal, head of European research and author of the new research report, ‘Dynamic Surveillance: Detection, Prevention and Deterrence’, changes to market structure and new regulations mean conventional techniques need to be thrown out in favour of surveillance programmes that match the markets’ dynamism. “It falls on the brokers as the primary intermediary between investors and exchanges to assist regulators in making sure that market surveillance catches up to the real-time dynamics of the market,” she said.
Today’s surveillance programmes are like a patchwork quilt, she added. “Some programmes monitor comprehensively in real time, others look backward, but recent market abuse scandals and the 6 May flash crash have revealed there is a yawning divide between the way markets operate and the way they are actually being surveilled.”
To meet the onslaught of new requirements and regulations, Tabb says brokers are faced now with three gargantuan challenges: collecting, collating, analysing, storing and retrieving data; ensuring practices and procedures prove their processes are robust and defensible; and expanding the list of details they need to watch for. In addition to satisfying regulators, clients and exchanges, brokers must satisfy the often conflicting internal demands of compliance officers, global heads of risk, heads of market risk, sponsored-access brokers and institutional agency desks.
By focusing on three key components of market surveillance – detection, prevention and deterrence – Mizen explained that brokers can gain real-time and historical analysis and oversight to detect anomalies; controls and processes to prevent errant order flow from reaching the markets by applying broker-owned risk controls; and real-time monitoring, control and, acting as deterrents, heavy penalties.
In the end, she said: “Surveillance will always be a race against time as market oversight must pull together trading activity as quickly as competition pulls it apart. But the constant expansion and complexity of markets raise the need to protect the markets, detect issues or abnormalities, and by doing so, deter abuse. This can only happen if market surveillance programmes and techniques are modern and sophisticated, applied consistently and comprehensively, and are able to keep up with the dynamic markets. Different from the past, brokers are now facing serious regulatory changes across the US and European markets, with Asia not far behind. This time it’s a major overhaul and because surveillance is critical, it is in the spotlight.”