ICMA’s European Repo and Collateral Council (ERCC) has published its guide to reporting repo transactions under the EU Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR). The new reporting regime introduced by SFTR will start its phased implementation in April 2020 and will require detailed reporting by EU-incorporated or located entities of all securities financing transactions (including repo and reverse repo) to authorised trade repositories.

An important update around #reporting guidance to help the #repo industry leading up to #SFTR go-live: https://t.co/JYP9QcaVQD

— Kaizen Reporting (@kaizenreporting) February 25, 2020

The regulation introduces granular daily reporting requirements for repos and other types of SFTs. Overall, SFTR defines 155 reporting fields (118 applicable to repo) and requires most of those fields to be matched between the two sides of the report. In addition, reporting firms will have to report any modifications, terminations and corrections throughout the life cycle of a trade and on a daily basis report on collateral market values, collateral reuse and margins.

The ICMA guide aims to help members interpret the regulatory reporting framework specified by ESMA and sets out complementary best practice recommendations to provide additional clarity and address ambiguities in the official guidance. It is supplemented by a suite of sample reports and an overview of repo life-cycle event reporting, which have both been published today.

ICMA has played a leading role in guiding the industry response to the challenges of SFTR reporting, through the ERCC’s dedicated SFTR Task Force which represents over 150 firms covering the whole spectrum of the market. The group includes reporting firms from both buy-side and sell-side but also market infrastructures and third-party service providers offering solutions to help reporting firms comply with SFTR. The guide published today is based on feedback from members of the SFTR Task Force and defines a market consensus on over 70 issues.

This is not a static document and will continue to evolve as we move closer to the reporting go-live date in April and beyond. Please make sure to download the latest version from our SFTR webpage when consulting the guide.

Complementing the work on best practices, ICMA actively provides support and technical training on the requirements of SFTR, running numerous workshops and webinars, operating a well-used ‘help line’ for members and participating in industry events.

Martin Scheck, ICMA’s Chief Executive commented: ‘Intensive cross industry collaboration through the task force coordinated by ICMA reflects the scale of the challenge that SFTR poses to repo and other SFT markets. It has succeeded in creating a clear and authoritative ‘how to’ guide for anyone obliged to report under SFTR and will support the objective of the regulation by facilitating good data quality from the market to enhance transparency’.

Source: ICMA