Financial advisors who were concerned about the upcoming federally-mandated changes to the cost basis reporting system received some good news last month, as Investment News reports that the Depository Trust and Clearing Co. (DTCC) has announced changes to its Cost-Basis Reporting Service that should remove much of the burden from the advisors and brokers and free their IT departments to work on other issues such as implementing new collateral management software.
Previously, the DTCC had only allowed firms to transfer cost basis information on transactions that passed through the Automated Customer Account Transfer Service (ACATS), a service of the DTCC’s subsidiary company the National Securities Clearing Corp. (NSCC). Changes will allow firms’ data to be passed to transfer agents, issuers, mutual funds, custodian banks and broker-dealers on both ACATS and non-ACATS transactions. This should allow firms to concentrate less of their efforts on cost basis reporting and spend more time on other elements such as improving their margin systems.
