In order to use data to gain competitive advantage, Tim D'arcy, senior vice president, FIS Astec Analytics, advised beneficial owners to be active in managing their programme so that they are quicker to notice market changes.
D'arcy was speaking at IMN's Beneficial Owners' International Securities Finance & Collateral Management Conference in Fort Lauderdale.
Discussing the data itself, one speaker noted that global revenue came in just shy of 10 billion in 2018. This was made up from $4.65 billion in the Americas, $3.09 billion in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and $2.22 billion in the Asia Pacific.
Nancy Allen, global product owner, DataLend, commented: “We saw volumes increase pretty much across the board, although the Americas suffered in the second half of the year.”
Data from DataLend found that the top five earners in 2018 were TESLA, Celltrion, Ubiquiti Networks, Sharp and Sirius XM, which together created $482 million in revenue. Of this, Allen noted that 2018 was an extremely volatile year for Tesla.
Meanwhile, in terms of beneficial owner collateral acceptance in 2018, it was noted that 56 percent of US beneficial owners used cash only, 43 percent used mixed collateral and 1 percent used non-cash only collateral.
This compares to 1 percent of non US beneficial owners who used cash only, 42 percent who used mixed collateral and 57 percent used non-cash only.
One panellist noted that if you can expand your collateral flexibility to include non-cash collateral then you should.
Melissa Gow, executive director, IHS Markit, noted that US equities loan balance against non-cash collateral rose through 2018, continuing the trend from 2010.
Gow commented: “Loan balances against cash collateral are flat, hovering around the $300 billion mark.”
Discussing some of the highlights from 2018, Gow noted that the sector pick was cannabis as it
represented almost 7.5 of North America revenue. Tilray, Aurora Cannabis, Aphria and Canopy earned 77 percent of revenue.
Predicting 2019 expectations, Gow said that there is an expectation of a continued strong performance due to the legalisation of derivatives online retail availability, and US state legalisation.
Gow further noted that exchange-traded funds (ETF lending) saw a record year as it was up 15 percent year over year in revenue.
She added: “[This year] market expectations see market volatility drive demand, leading to increased fees and revenues.”
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