Last November ESMA published a new Regulatory Technical Standard outlining significant changes in the EMIR reporting formats. EMIR reporting has been in place since February 2014 and has seen two sets of “validations” added since. The validations change the rules about what goes into the fields, but do not change the fields themselves as to do so will require a modification to the original RTS. This is now what is proposed.

While we do not have a date for the application of the new formats, they are likely to start in the middle of next year, 9 months after the RTS is adopted. EFETNet recently made this announcement recommending that clients begin to consider the changes. This article on the Abide Financial web site also considers the changes and reminds of the (as yet unapproved) proposal by ESMA that if an FC executes a trade with a smaller NFC- under certain thresholds, the FC may be obligated to report both sides of the trade.

These changes, coupled with the likely change in the REMIT schema, will keep market participants busy over the coming months, as will new MiFID II reporting requirements. Hopefully the changes will achieve their objective of improving the data quality found within the TRs. In this vein, ClarusFT have published this article examining aspects of the committees data found in SDRs, the US version of a TR under the Dodd Frank Act.