The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s securities markets regulator, has received reports from trade repositories (TRs) indicating that the first day of reporting by financial and no-financial market participants under the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR), has gone smoothly.
Today, all four TRs opened their systems and start receiving and processing SFT data submitted by reporting firms. ESMA has not identified any major disruptions so far in the functioning of TRs. Over the coming days it will continue to monitor the availability of TR systems and data to both reporting firms and authorities.
Next steps
ESMA will continue to engage with market participants to clarify any remaining issues and will assess the need for further supervisory convergence measures to facilitate compliance with the new reporting requirements.
The focus of ESMA’s supervision will be on ensuring the availability of TR systems as well as resolving shortcomings in the quality of data provided by reporting entities to TRs. As with any new reporting regime ESMA expects that issues will be identified in the first months following go-live, in particular as reporting systems continue to be improved and stabilised.
A framework, implemented by ESMA, for monitoring and enhancing the quality of data available to NCAs, central banks and other authorities entitled to access transaction data under SFTR. ESMA will supervise the implementation of any corrective and/or remediation measures by TRs as well as coordinating targeted actions by NCAs towards reporting entities.
