The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a consultation paper on Friday that suggests that rules requiring the reporting of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives trades need work in order to improve the quality of data being reported and its usefulness to regulators.
The ESMA consultation proposes rule changes designed to enhance the functionality provided by trade repositories (TRs). In particular, the regulators say that the current comparability of the data being reported is not adequate and ESMA’s access to those data isn’t good enough.
“The authorities entitled to have access to trade repository data have had to adapt to different and sometimes divergent practices with respect to access to data and data aggregation and comparison,” the ESMA paper says.
In addition, the ESMA paper notes that regulators believes the current data access functionality needs significant improvement and that the data being reported are not sufficiently comparable.
As a result, ESMA suggests that the current rules for trade repository access should be revised in order to improve the quality of the data. To that end, it is proposing amendments to the current rules “in order to ensure direct and immediate access to data” by various national regulators within Europe and to facilitate the aggregation and comparison of data across trade repositories.
The proposals include measures to standardize the output format of trade repository data; standardize and secure data exchange between trade repositories and regulators; and ensuring secure machine-to-machine connections as well as use of data encryption protocols.
The regulators are seeking comments on the proposed amendments by Feb. 1, 2016.