The U.S. Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) has called on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to delay the implementation of consolidated audit trail (CAT) requirements.
“Specific challenges with the current plan that must be addressed include a governance structure that does not give the industry a meaningful voice, a rushed implementation schedule that is simply not feasible, and proposals to eliminate duplicative regulatory reporting systems that are not sufficiently aggressive,” says Randy Snook, executive vice president, business policies and practices, at SIFMA, in a statement.
Additionally, SIFMA has concerns about data security that, it says, “must be addressed before moving forward with development and data collection,” Snook says.
“Consider that once completed, the CAT would be the world’s largest data repository for securities transactions. Every day the system would ingest 58 billion records – orders, executions and quotes for the equities and options markets – and maintain data on over 100 million customer accounts and their unique customer information. At least 3,000 individual users would have access to this information,” Snook adds. “In light of increasing cyber risk, we urge regulators to study the costs and benefits to determine if the collection, storage, and use of personally-identifiable information is necessary.”