The evolution of EEA transaction reporting

Abstract

Transaction reporting is an essential tool for regulators, enabling them to meet some of their most important regulatory objectives in monitoring for market abuse and maintaining orderly markets. The regulators demand complete and accurate transaction reporting and the Financial Conduct Authority has demonstrated through a series of high-profile fines that it will not tolerate reporting failures. To comply with these requirements, firms need to have a robust reporting framework with adequate systems and controls over their reporting. It is also essential that firms don’t under-estimate the complexity of transaction reporting under MiFID. This complexity is set to increase under MiFIR as the reporting obligation expands from the reporting of just equity and debt related instruments to encompass commodities, interest rate and forex derivatives as well. The amount of data required will also increase considerably with the current 24 fields in a MiFID report expanding to over 60 fields under MiFIR. This data will also include information on individuals, including names and dates of birth, bringing data protection issues into sharper focus. Whilst an implementation data of January 2017 may seem a long way off, firms need to start preparation now if they are to meet these new reporting requirements successfully.