UK Launches Taskforce to Streamline Post-Trade Reporting Rules

The FCA and the BoE are inviting expressions of interest from market participants to join the taskforce, Reuters reported.

Currently, transaction rules are governed mainly by regulatory laws, including the UK MiFIR (Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation), UK EMIR (European Market Infrastructure Regulation) and UK SFTR (Securities Financing Transactions Regulation).

In order to achieve the goal, both the BoE and FCA have established a long-term harmonisation approach aimed at reducing unnecessary duplication, ensuring that reporting requirements are proportionate to their benefit, whilst maintaining their ability to gain the insights needed to support their respective statutory objectives.

According to the terms of reference from the FCA, they have set out "principles for the long-term collection of transaction and post-trade data and next steps". This includes the "intention to establish a cross-authority and industry taskforce to inform the design of the long-term harmonisation approach."

The taskforce will provide a forum to engage a wide range of industry stakeholders to gather input on proposals and wider views regarding the goal.

The Taskforce will be comprised of three separate working groups: a main Policy group, supported by a Strategy group and an Architecture group, according to an official statement.

The policy group will have the objective to identify and assess opportunities for "harmonising data collected under UK MiFIR, UK EMIR and UK SFTR". The group will also review and share feedback on proposals to support the simplification of reporting of data.

The strategy group will be providing 'strategic insight' from industry experience, explore how harmonization will benefit reporting firms too.

The Architecture group will identify and assess opportunities to leverage modern technologies, architecture and data to simplify and streamline transaction and post-trade reporting.

Notably, the taskforce will not have any decision-making responsibilities, does not hold a formal advisory role, and its outputs will not be binding on BoE or FCA.

The taskforce members will "comprise a diverse set of senior representatives drawn from firms involved in transaction and post-trade reporting".

The Taskforce will be made up of a maximum of 50 Members, representatives from both the FCA and BoE, and other attendees invited on an ad hoc basis. Members will be appointed for an initial period of 18 months, after which their membership will be reviewed by the Taskforce Steering Committee to ensure diversity of perspective and balance of expertise.

The Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR) transaction reporting rules were introduced in 2018 and onshored from the European Union (EU) on December 31, 2020. Following 'Brexit', the UK's treasury said that those rules will be repealed.

As part of an earlier 'Consultation Paper' by the FCA mentioned that the aim is to reduce the regulatory burden on firms, support UK economic growth, increase FCA's ability to fight financial crime and protect market integrity.

The paper has proposed that the number of data points in reporting, the FCA had proposed in its paper to remove the reporting obligations for 6 million financial instruments which are only tradeable on EU trading venues, while also to remove foreign exchange (FX) derivatives from the scope of reporting requirements, reducing costs for over 400 UK firms.

Transaction reports are submitted by companies to the FCA on a 'T+1' basis, that is a day after the trade is done. The reports cover a wide range of financial instruments, and includes the identity of the buyer and seller, price, trading venue, and other such fields.

The data is key to the FCA fighting "financial crime, support sustained economic growth and be a smarter regulator." The reports, which are not public, are used to detect, investigate and prevent market abuse.

- ANI