On December 16, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission granted temporary exemptive relief, until July 31, 2023, from the CAT NMS Plan requirement to link representative orders (riskless principal/ customer facilitation orders) to the associated customer orders. Based on requests from multiple FIF members, FIF proposes to submit a request to the regulators to extend the implementation date for this requirement to July 31, 2024. On November 5, 2021, FIF sent a survey to the members of the FIF CAT Tech Specs Working Group requesting that FIF members provide additional detail relating to...

Back Office Committee. The FIF Back Office Committee met to review applicable FICC, DTC, NSCC, SEC, MSRB, OCC, IRS and FINRA updates during the past month. Find this month's agenda here.  FIF Rule 606 Working Group. The Rule 606 Working Group continued its discussion of FINRA Regulatory Notice 21-35, “FINRA Requests Comment on Proposed Order Routing Disclosure Requirements for OTC Equity Securities and Potential Steps to Facilitate Investor Access to Current Order Routing Disclosures for NMS Securities.” FIF CAT Tech Specs Working Group. The CAT Tech Specs Working Group discussed...

Intercontinental Exchange announced that its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Reference Data coverage now includes 2 million fixed income instruments. ICE’s ESG Reference data covers equity and fixed income securities across North America, Europe and Asia and adds transparency to allow users to better understand ESG risks and opportunities. ICE’s ESG Reference Data coverage includes corporate bonds, municipals, sovereigns and money markets across North America, Europe and Asia, and provides detailed ESG attributes and indicators that may be financially material, such as greenhouse...

As part of its initiative to bring greater efficiency and transparency to alternatives asset servicing, Northern Trust has launched a feature within its Front Office Solutions platform that utilizes machine learning to empower sophisticated asset allocators with better oversight of their research process. Each month, asset allocators for endowments, foundations, family offices and other institutions receive thousands of files including newsletters, fund statements, quarterly updates, and legal documents that are manually filed for investment manager research purposes. The new feature...

Virtu has launched a new electronic workflow for swaptions on credit default swaps on its cross-asset multi-dealer request for quote (RFQ) platform, the RFQ-hub. The new workflow was developed in collaboration with asset manager Union Investment which worked with the RFQ-hub team to automate existing traditional voice and manual dominated swaptions within CDS workflow. It allows swaptions traders to gain better price discovery by leveraging multiple liquidity providers via electronic request for quote workflows. Union was the first institution to negotiate one of the fully electronic...

Join us Thursday, November 11 at 4:15pm ET for part seven of our webinar series on the implementation considerations of the SEC Market Data Infrastructure Rule. Tom Jordan, FIF Advisory Chair, and Manisha Kimmel, Chief Policy Officer at MayStreet, will discuss the November 5th filing of the Plan Amendment by the SROs. The agenda will include a summary of the amendment, status of governance changes, potential next steps and audience participation. In order to attend this webinar, please register here. If you have any questions, please email us at This email address is being protected from...

On Wednesday, November 17 at 4pm ET FIF will host a webinar on Trading Digital Assets. This webinar will provide practical guidance to retail and institutional brokers and market makers on trading digital assets, including connectivity to venues, custody of digital assets and determining which products can be traded and offered to customers. Viktor Grinberg will moderate the panel. Panel participants include Alan Konevsky of tZERO, Mike Smith of IPC, Hongzhe Sun of Paxos, and Dave Weisberger of CoinRoutes. In order to attend this webinar, please register here. If you have any questions,...

On December 16, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission granted temporary exemptive relief, until July 31, 2023, from the CAT NMS Plan requirement to link representative orders (riskless principal/ customer facilitation orders) to the associated customer orders. Based on requests from multiple FIF members, FIF proposes to submit a request to the regulators to extend the implementation date for this requirement to July 31, 2024. On November 5, 2021, FIF sent a survey to the members of the FIF CAT Tech Specs Working Group requesting that FIF members provide additional detail relating to...

An FIF member has questions relating to the Supplemental Liquidity Schedule (SLS) recently adopted by FINRA (see FINRA Regulatory Notice 21-31) and would like to discuss these questions with other FIF members. The SLS takes effect on March 1, 2022. If you are interested in participating in an FIF member discussion on this topic, please send a note to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and we will include you on the invite for this discussion.