The UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has unveiled an overhaul of its transaction reporting rules that it says will save financial services firms more than £100m a year.
The reforms are designed to reduce duplicative and low-value reporting while maintaining the quality of data used by the regulator to detect market abuse, monitor market functioning and supervise firms.
Under the changes, the number of fields included in transaction reports will fall from 65 to 52. Foreign exchange derivatives will also be removed from the reporting requirements, cutting costs for more than 400 firms.
The FCA will additionally scrap reporting requirements for around seven million financial instruments, including equities, bonds and certain derivatives that are only traded on European Union venues.
The regulator estimated that this measure alone would save firms approximately £32m annually.
Firms will also be required to correct historical transaction reporting errors covering a maximum of three years, rather than the current five-year period. The regulator said this would reduce the volume of transaction reports requiring resubmission by around a third.
Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said transaction reports remained “the backbone” of the watchdog’s market oversight work.
“They help us catch financial crime, monitor market stability and supervise firms effectively. By taking a smarter, streamlined approach to reporting, we’re giving firms meaningful cost relief while ensuring we continue to receive the accurate, high-quality data that keeps UK markets clean and competitive,” she said.
The revised rules will come into force on 3 April 2028, giving firms time to update, test and implement their reporting systems.
However, the FCA said it would adopt a flexible supervisory approach that could allow firms to introduce certain changes earlier where they are ready to do so.
The regulator said it will continue working with the Bank of England and the Treasury to align transaction and post-trade reporting requirements.
