On January 11, FIF hosted a call to review a digest of rules recently adopted or proposed by the SEC and FINRA. FIF has scheduled a call for Thursday February 1 at 3 pm ET to continue this review. The January 11 call focused on rulemaking relating to Technology, Operations and Finance; and Equities. The February 1 call will focus on rulemaking in the following areas, time permitting: Options; Fixed Income; Security-Based Swaps; Multiple Asset Classes; and Compliance and Proceedings. FIF has invited the members of the Compliance and Surveillance Working Group and the SEC FINRA Regulations...

FIF will be scheduling a call for the TRACE Working Group to review and discuss the first draft of an FIF comment letter on (i) the January 11 rule filing by FINRA to reduce to one minute the TRACE reporting timeframe for securities that are currently subject to a fifteen-minute reporting timeframe and (ii) the parallel rule filing by the MSRB on January 12. FIF will send the invite to Working Group members later this week; the invite will include the date and time for the call.

On January 19 the SEC published for comment the amended market data governance plan submitted by the SROs (the exchanges and FINRA) on October 23, 2023. The amendment includes a process for selecting a new plan administrator. Comments are due 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. As described in the SEC notice: “The SROs propose that the Plan would become operative after the steps set forth in Exhibit F of the proposed Plan are completed. Generally, the SROs believe there are six workstreams associated with the implementation of the Plan: (1) Setting up the Plan’s...

FIF TRACE Working Group. The TRACE Working Group reviewed and discussed the January 11 rule filing by FINRA to reduce to one minute the TRACE reporting timeframe for securities that are currently subject to a fifteen-minute reporting timeframe and the parallel rule filing by the MSRB on January 12. The Working Group discussed TRACE reporting for foreign sovereign bonds that trade dirty (i.e., with accrued interest included in the price). FIF Clock Synch for Fixed Income Subgroup. The subgroup reviewed a draft FIF letter to FINRA requesting confirmation about the supervisory obligations...

FIF is pleased to welcome Valstro to the FIF Community. 

The Back Office Committee will have its next call on Tuesday January 16 at 11 am ET to review applicable FICC, DTC, NSCC, SEC, MSRB, OCC, IRS and FINRA updates during the past month.

FIF has scheduled a call for the Section 31 subgroup for Tuesday January 16 at 3 pm ET. The subgroup will discuss next steps after the recent FIF member call with FINRA representatives to discuss enhancing the reconciliation process for the FINRA Regulatory Transaction Fee (charged by FINRA to reimburse FINRA for the Section 31 fee it pays to the SEC). If you would like to participate on this call and are not a member of this subgroup, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

FIF has scheduled a call for the Clock Synch for Fixed Income subgroup for Thursday January 18 at 10:30 am. The Working Group will discuss the supervisory obligations of a non-executing firm when reporting to TRACE the execution timestamp provided by the executing firm. If you would like to participate on this call and are not a member of this subgroup, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..