The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s securities markets regulator, has granted four trade repositories (TRs) with licences to operate under the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR).
The green light was given to DTCC Derivatives Repository, UnaVista Trade, KDPW, the Polish central securities depository (CSD), and REGIS-TR.
When SFTR reporting obligations begin in July firms will need to report their SFTs to an approved TR.
All four TRs have been registered for all types of SFT’s, which include: repos, securities or commodities lending and securities or commodities borrowing transactions, buy-sell back or sell-buy back transactions and margin lending transactions.
The regulation is designed to increase market transparency by allowing regulatory authorities to assess the risks associated with the securities financing market.
The TRs were already registered with ESMA as TRs for derivatives contracts under the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), the precursor to SFTR.
The authorisation of the TRs under SFTR was initially set to be completed by the phase-one go-live on 13 April.
In March, when ESMA granted a three-month grace period that saw phase one and two combined on the latter's deadline in July it also said it “[did] not consider it necessary to register any TR ahead of 13 April”.
At the time, ESMA said the delay would give TRs more time to cope with the COVID-19 emergency and be ready to support the new reporting regime at a later point in time.
It further stated that TRs should expect to get their cards stamped “sufficiently ahead” of July, but many still expected this to happen just before the deadline.
Commenting on today’s approval, Val Wotton, managing director, repository and derivatives services at DTCC, says: “We’re pleased with this decision. With less than three months remaining before SFTR’s implementation deadline for banks, investment firms, central counterparties and CSDs, we are encouraged by the level of their preparations.”
REGIS-TR CEO Thomas Steimann states: “We are delighted to be expanding our product offering to SFTR services, combining our wealth of knowledge in securities financing and expertise in regulatory reporting. Alleviating the reporting burden for market participants, we are the natural choice of trade repository for SFTR.”
Meanwhile, Mark Husler, CEO of UnaVista, comments: “UnaVista’s approach to SFTR is to simplify things as much as possible for our community, that means making easy to prepare, test and connect and then providing tools to help firms improve their reporting once live.
He adds “This will mean that our customers and their clients will be able to ensure compliance with their SFTR reporting obligations from day one in a simple, cost-efficient way.”
