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The STA Newsletter 2016 • January
STA Operations Committee Meets in Florida!
By Cynthia Jones
The STA Operations Committee held an October
face to face meeting in Florida in conjunction with
the STAAnnual Conference. They then held a follow
up to those discussions on December 10th
. The group
is actively engaged in several important initiatives.
At the October meeting, the Committee agreed to
reconvene the STA Conversions Sub-Committee,
the group that had authored the STA Conversion
Guidelines in 2013. (Their Guidelines are available
on the STA website, www.stai.org). The intent of
this action was to update the Guidelines with data
fields needed in conversions to enable agents to
comply with the FATCA regulations, a request that
had been made by a number of members. Shellie
McCauley, of Wells Fargo Shareowner Services,
and Don Gress, of Continental Stock Transfer &
Trust Company continue to lead this group and have
already embarked on the new project. The updated
Guidelines were made available on the STA website
in late December.
There was considerable discussion at both meetings
about possible DTC enhancements to the files
pertaining to DWAC’s. A number of modifications
might be made, such as a DWAC return file from
agents to DTC, or the ability for an agent to require
approval of DWAC’s by two staff members, to
name a few. However, while the Committee seeks
to gather more details about these DTC proposals,
some have suggested that while the enhancements
might be “nice to have”, it might be more prudent to
put them off until after agents and the industry have
accomplished the implementation of the shortened
settlement cycle that is targeted for Q3 2017.
As the target date to reach T+2 draws ever closer,
members of the Operations Committee have been
actively involved in the planning and discussions.
While Charlie Rossi represents the STA on the
Industry Steering Committee for the project, both
Committee Co-chairs, Katie Sevcik from Wells
Fargo Shareowner Services and Kevin Burns from
Computershare, have participated in the various
Working Groups that were formed. SEC Chair,
Mary Jo White had asked for a more detailed
implementation plan than the one formerly provided
to her to be delivered by December 18th
. Much of
the plan relates to buy and sell activities of broker
dealers, but Kevin advised the Committee that pages
7 and 8 hold items of special interest to transfer
agents. The plan will be provided to STA members
as soon as finalized. In addition, the Operations
Committee intends to provide a webinar later this
month to tell agents what they need to know about
the migration to T+2.
Other topics discussed by the Committee include the
possible expansion of the DTC Centralized Billing
system to include other kinds of fees now billed to
brokers manually, a new DTC fee for new CUSIPS
resulting from Corporate Actions, and success rates
of the notices agents now send to “unresponsive
payees”. Going forward, now that the SEC has
issued its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
and Concept Release with respect to the transfer
agent rules, the Committee will be actively assisting
the STA in the formulation of our comment letter.
Notes from all the meetings of the Operations
Committee may be found in the Members Only
section of the STA website. 
Front row: Matt Blevins, Empire Stock Transfer; Kevin Burns, Computershare,
Katie Sevcik, Wells Fargo; Don Gress, Continental Stock Transfer. Back row:
Sean Fontaine, Computershare; Shellie McCauley, Wells Fargo; Monica
Allman, Publix; Cynthia Jones, STA