In preparation for the January 3, 2017 go-live date for Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR), Sapient Global Markets expects to have an updated release of its Compliance Management and Reporting System (CMRS) ready for user testing by summer of 2016, according to company officials.

“We already begun enhancing our data dictionary with the additional identification and trade information that MiFID II requires,” noted Peter Meechan, director at Sapient Global Markets.

The next step for the vendor will be mapping the necessary linkages to the new approved reporting mechanisms and approved publication arrangements.

“We are working with the major ARMs and APAs; looking at their information; and adding that side of the mapping,” Meechan added. “We hope to have that portion of the beta testing completed by the end of the first quarter of next year. However, we can only beta test when we have someone with which to beta test.”

Once Sapient Global Markets and its partners finish that portion of the beta testing, they will allot several months for user-acceptance testing if needed.

“It really is not about testing one product,” explained Meechan. “It’s about testing workflow throughout the organization and out to the reporting utilities. It’s a big challenge and that’s why we are trying to push it out early.”

Sapient Global Markets plans to roll out the new MiFIR trade message generation, validation and routing capabilities as a separate module for its CMRS platform, which already collects, normalizes, applies eligibility rules, formats, and routes message to the proper mandated reporting utility.

“We’ve supported CFTC- and EMEA-reporting requirements since they went live as well as for those required by Australian, Canadian and Singaporean regulators,” Meechan added.