On December 15, FIF submitted a letter to FINRA on CAT billing. In the letter, FIF members request that FINRA publish a Regulatory Notice to allow for industry comment on any proposal by FINRA to pass-through FINRA’s CAT fees to its members.

The Back Office Committee will have its next call on Monday December 18 at 10 am ET to review applicable FICC, DTC, NSCC, SEC, MSRB, OCC, IRS and FINRA updates during the past month. During the call, FIF will review the recent rule changes adopted by FINRA to conform to T+1 and the requirement for same-day allocations. The Working Group will also discuss how members plan to handle the scenario where a customer does not provide allocations by end-of-day.

The Front Office Committee will have its next call on Tuesday December 19 at 11 am ET to review applicable updates and notices from the SEC, FINRA, FINRA CAT and the equity and option exchanges. The spotlight presenter will be Padma Kadiyala, Finance Professor at the Pace University Lubin School of Business, who will discuss and provide a demo of a trading transparency app.

FIF SEC Cyber, Reg SCI and Reg S-P Working Group. FIF hosted a call to review the SEC’s recent approval of a rule change by The Options Clearing Corporation (“OCC”) to enhance the cybersecurity obligations of OCC clearing members.  Compliance with FINRA Clock Synch Requirements for Trading Systems in the Cloud; Validation of Compliance with Trading Halt Requirements. At the request of FIF members, FIF hosted a call to discuss compliance with FINRA clock synch requirements for trading systems in the cloud (including for CAT) and validation of compliance with trading halt...

Clear Street announced their goal of expanding their product by pioneering a technology-first experience for prime brokerage on their cloud-based platform, according to a story in MarketsMedia news. In 2019, the firm began servicing prime brokerage clients in U.S. equities and options on their proprietary clearing, settlement, and custody platform. Since then, they’ve added execution, securities lending, repo, margin financing, and more. Their mission is to build a modern infrastructure for capital markets, with the goal of creating one platform to serve all investor types across all...

Intercontinental Exchange announced the addition of cryptocurrency options data to the Cryptocurrency Data Feed offered via the ICE Consolidated Feed. Launched by ICE and Blockstream in 2018, the Cryptocurrency Data Feed offers real-time cryptocurrency information and includes data on over 100 cryptocurrencies from more than 30 globally sourced venues and exchanges. As part of ICE’s exclusive agreement with Blockstream, ICE offers coverage of prices and order book data for cryptocurrencies by exchange. ICE works with Blockstream to aggregate cryptocurrency data from multiple sources into an...

On December 5, FIF held its largest event to date at the offices of Société Générale. After opening remarks from Greg Zielinski, Chief Operating Officer of Société Générale Americas, there were two panels, with the first one focusing on implementation challenges of new regulations in 2024 and beyond. The regulatory panel featured Mark Davies of S3, Michael Lurie of UBS, Judy McDonald of SIG and Ignacio Sandoval of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. The second panel focused on trading and market data in the cloud and hybrid environments. The technology panel featured Anand Pradhan of NYSE, Prerak...

FIF has scheduled a call for Monday December 11 at 2 pm ET to review the SEC’s recent approval of a rule change by The Options Clearing Corporation titled “Cybersecurity Obligations”. FIF has invited the members of the FIF SEC Cyber, Reg SCI and Reg S-P Working Group to participate on this call. If you would like to participate on this call and are not a member of this Working Group, please update your FIF profile or send a note to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

FIF has scheduled an additional call for the CAT Transaction Reporting call for this week. The call will be on Tuesday December 12 at 11 am ET and will focus on the review of a draft FIF letter to the SEC on the requirement for a routing firm to report to CAT settings applied by a receiving firm. The regularly-scheduled CAT call on Wednesday December 13 at 2 pm ET will focus on CAT billing and recent updates to the CAT Technical Specifications.