In July, the American Bar Association Tax Section hosted a tax webinar where IRS officials confirmed that tax information reporting regulations covering virtual currency transactions are in the pipeline. However, this was already on the IRS’s published guidance plan. Part of the urgency is that virtual currency tax-reporting regulations are a critical piece of the IRS’s enforcement effort on crypto. But crypto tax reporting raises numerous, novel questions that are not easy to answer. In the Refinitiv white paper 2020 Crypto Tax Update Sound & Fury, we provided a recap of the year in crypto tax and considered what has been answered and what is still outstanding.

How has this long, strange period of Covid-induced change been for you? It’s been an odd one for me. I spent the first few months of 2020 doing what I have done for over a decade: getting on planes for 10-day jaunts working for brands and the people that manage them.

The first few days of March ended up being my final week of that ‘normality’. I flew to London, Tallinn, Oslo and then Reykjavik, and then circled back via clients in Brisbane and Sydney. I landed back home, watched the travel ban coalesce all around me, and have not been on a plane since.

All that flying was obviously very labour-intensive. But being in a client’s office, having a beer with them in the evening, seeing them in their natural habitat, always added so many extra levels of insight. If I could put a number on it I would tell you that about 50% of the consulting job happened in the allocated sessions in HQ and the other half in cars, bars and around the back...

Today, it seems that every major technology company doubles as a bank. In the past few years, we’ve seen the launch of Apple Card, Facebook’s Libra, Uber Money, Square Cash and Google Pay—all services that promise the most convenient and fastest payment service on the market. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the transition from cash to digital currency, underscoring the need for a more efficient and transparent payments system. 

Historically, traditional bank payments have been slow, unreliable and expensive. Despite technological advancements over the past 50 years–such as being able to send a message across the world instantly–we’re still using the same banking system my grandfather used to wire money from India to the U.S. in the 1960s. The method is about as effective as mailing a check. 

Especially in a time of global disaster, the need for easy, fast and low-cost payments touches every corner of the globe....

IoT is quickly becoming the most important business revolution of the digital age, with its implications being felt across all industries worldwide. However, unlocking the true potential of IoT requires not only a clear roadmap with specific objectives, but also a solid front-end and back-end infrastructure that’s capable of making sense of the data obtained. It’s for this reason that both public and private organizations sometimes struggle when implementing a successful IoT strategy and fail to reach the desired return-on-investment (ROI).

To address the risks you may encounter with IoT, we’ve created this short, insightful infographic. After reading it, you’ll have a better idea of the tools and actions you should be executing during each of the three stages of IoT implementation to overcome challenges and maximize effectiveness. You’ll also obtain a straightforward checklist that your teams can refer to when establishing or optimizing their strategies.

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This week we look at the impact that the options market is having on US equity volatility, where one player has captured the headlines. But are they the biggest fish in the ocean? It may be the smaller fish who are causing the biggest stir. In the Chatter, we look at how the volatility in US equities is spilling over into other assets and what to look at for signs of true contagion. In the Whisper, we look at the quarterly options expiry, which may also be having an influence on some of these outsized equity moves.

Investor interest in sustainable investment products continues to gain momentum, with Refinitiv research revealing that environmental, social and governance (ESG) fund inflows registered USD 36 billion in the first quarter of 2020. In a Refinitiv webinar, Connecting with clients through ESG, expert speakers unpack the drivers of this rising demand and some of the key challenges and opportunities facing wealth managers. The speakers go on to discuss the need to incorporate robust ESG data and strategies into the investment process and client conversations.

ESG funds are tending to outperform their benchmarks and the market, and sustainable investing is consequently gaining more industry attention. Robert Jenkins, Head of Refinitiv Lipper research, has analyzed 12 of the most prominent active U.S ESG funds that hold $33bn in AUM. These types of funds have been evolving in terms of their sophistication and type of investments they include.

In the stock market, uncertainty and volatility go hand-in-hand, and the COVID-19 pandemic has turbocharged both this year. This is leaving investors asking what tools they can use to analyze data and accurately predict future corporate earnings.

Today, financial mobile applications and similar digital platforms need to provide much more than simple banking processes like payments and transactions, due to consumers’ high expectations and an increasingly competitive e-banking industry. FIs already recognize that advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), applied robotics, and biometrics are more and more relevant to deliver innovative products and services that cater to consumers’ dynamic needs. These ever-changing needs require solid prioritization by FIs in terms of investment and shifting their budgets to the proper channels in hopes of overcoming the competition and delivering what their customers expect.

In today’s volatile markets, financial firms require data that is cleaned, tagged, and standardized, and they need it fast. The main purpose of corporate actions reports is to help financial firms analyze investment risk. They can also be used to help in other ways, such as helping firms to consider reputational risk and to manage notification data. Best practice for financial firms to get the most out of corporate actions data includes: global coverage in a streamlined, standardized format; industry-standard ISO 15022 delivery; and best-in-class data that is constantly refreshed with intra-day updates.

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