31 August, 2020
Working Group Updates 8/31/2020
31 August, 2020
- FIF CAT Committee - The FIF CAT Committee summarized the FIF CAT Tech Spec meetings of the week and any important initiatives coming out of FINRA CAT.
- FIF TRACE Working Group - The group focused on FINRA's proposed changes to the TRACE reporting rules that were recommended by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fixed Income Market Structure Advisory Committee. The proposed changes would require firms to: (1) identify in TRACE corporate bond trades where the price of the trade is based on a spread to a benchmark Treasury security that was agreed upon earlier in the day (i.e., a “delayed Treasury spot trade”) and report the time at which the spread was agreed upon; and (2) identify in TRACE corporate bond trades that are a part of a larger portfolio trade. FIF is in the process of writing a comment letter to FINRA on these proposed changes based off FIF Member feedback. Comments are due to FINRA by September 14th.
- FIF CAT Tech Spec Requirements Working Group - FIF's Tech Spec calls this past week focused on CAT Milestone Go-Live Dates, the Production environment going live for Options 2b Intrafirm Linkage validations (Monday, August 24), LTID Account Information testing environment opening (Monday, August 24), FINRA CAT's first Weekly CAIS/LTID Industry Testing Checkpoint Call (Wednesday, August 26), the FINRA CAT-hosted Industry Member Checkpoint Call (Tuesday, August 25), FIF Member provided comments on the initial draft of FIF’s comment letter in response to FINRA's August 14th Rule Proposal outlining the key metrics that will determine the ultimate retirement of OATS, FIF submitted to FINRA CAT FIF Member recommendations on the FINRA reporter portal and other error handling feedback (submitted on Tuesday, August 25) and, lastly, FIF reviewed RFQ scenarios recently issued by FINRA CAT (see Sections 2.16 and 3.7 of the CAT Industry Member Reporting Scenarios Document
Eduard Kotlyar