ICD Unveils Comprehensive Money Market Fund Reform Solutions for Corporate Treasury

ICD's MMF Reform Solutions campaign begins today at 2:00pm EDT with ICD INSIGHT™, an industry webinar featuring Treasury Strategies' Anthony Carfang and ICD's Tory Hazard. The campaign continues at San Francisco's The Battery with the 2016 ICD Roadshow, a live event beginning at 3:30pm PDT with a panel discussion featuring Anthony Carfang, Treasury Strategies Senior Partner; Sunita Parasuraman, Facebook Director of Treasury; Dette Lazo, Levi Strauss & Co Director of Global Treasury Operations; and Debbi Cunningham, Federated EVP and Chief Investment Officer.

While bank deposits and Prime MMFs continue to be an integral part of corporate portfolios, regulations are forcing treasury practitioners to more actively manage those assets. Institutional Prime MMF investors should maintain diversified portfolios and use compliance, reporting and monitoring tools to avoid VNAV MMFs that tread too closely to liquidity minimums. Given this heightened liquidity scrutiny, and for Institutional Prime MMF's to maintain their very viability, fund managers are extremely incentivized to stay above liquidity minimums where the possibility for fees and gates exist.

Tory Hazard, ICD President & COO said, "Our interdisciplinary team of treasurers, MMF executives, trading specialists and technology engineers developed dozens of ICD Portal™ and Transparency Plus® enhancements that provide actionable MMF reform intelligence throughout ICD Portal. These advances enable ICD clients to meet the new MMF reform challenges and properly manage portfolio risk and liquidity."

ICD Portal's new Gain/Loss Report allows corporations to efficiently take advantage of the IRS and U.S. Treasury proposed Simplified Tax Accounting Method for Variable Net Asset Value MMFs.  "Our enhanced automated accounting report designed to measure net gains and losses is an excellent example of how technology is minimizing the impact of the coming MMF regulations," said Thomas C. Knight CCM, ICD EVP & Treasurer. "Corporate treasury not having to track individual purchase and redemption transactions eliminates the biggest challenge relating to Institutional Prime MMF reform."

The new corporate treasury settlement model is beginning to unfold with the majority of fund complexes leaning toward three intraday strikes at 9am, 12pm, and 3pm ET, enabling Prime MMF investors to receive settlement of cash throughout the day. Some fund companies are also adding an end-of-day strike at 5pm ET that would operate on a T+1 basis, which is useful for locking in the transaction and price to facilitate an early redemption settlement on the following day.

"Integrated systems and automation become even more important with the complexities of intraday pricing and settlement," said ICD SVP & Head of Global Trading Sebastian Ramos. "We have worked with fund companies, transfer agents, clearing and custody banks, technology vendors and clients on streamlining VNAV MMF workflow to provide daily liquidity, seamless integration with treasury workstations and automated settlement solutions."

Regulatory changes have already had an effect on corporate treasury portfolios as evidenced by the AFP Liquidity Surveys of 2014 and 2015. The mean number of investment vehicles used by survey respondents with over $1 billion in revenues increased from 2.8 in 2014 to 3.2 in 2015. While other money market instruments are getting deserved attention, Institutional Prime MMFs remain the most popular investment for ICD clients because of their low risk, high liquidity and competitive yield.

About ICD: ICD is the world's leading institutional investment and risk management company. ICD's next-generation Software-as-a-Service portal, best practices methodologies and award-winning Transparency Plus® exposure analytics, support corporate treasury with end-to-end solutions. The ICD Global Trade Desk™ provides expert service out of San Francisco, London and Boston. ICD develops its own proprietary technologies through Institutional Cash Distributors Technology LLC in Golden, Colorado. Institutional Cash Distributors LLC is a FINRA/SIPC member. Institutional Cash Distributors Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom. For more information, visit http://www.icdportal.com or email [email protected].

Media contact
Debby Barri, ICD Public Relations Director
424-206-2402, [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160413/355190 

SOURCE Institutional Cash Distributors