The Swiss Stock Exchange, SIX, announced this week that its SFTR reporting services are now live, aligning with the introduction of the regulation, which according to the exchange, will impact 170 of its own clients.
SFTR, which stands for Securities Financing Transaction Regulation, is a European regulation that aims to enhance the transparency of the securities financing markets. It does this by requiring those who enter into securities financing transactions (SFTs) to report the SFT to a trade repository.
SIX: smaller institutions to feel compliance burden
The new regulation requires a lot of transactions to be reconciled between market participants, regulators and trade repositories. The additional compliance burden this regulation creates is particularly felt among smaller and mid-sized institutions, the Swiss exchange said.
Commenting on the launch, Raphael Heuberger, Head Business Development Securities Finance, Securities & Exchanges, SIX said in the statement: “The launch of this service is yet another commitment to the cross-border business in our market. With a long-term strategy, effective partnerships and scale, we support the market to tackle their vastly changing regulatory environment.”
Under its new offering, SIX automates the way it provides Unique Transaction Identifiers (UTI). In particular, it has created a scale offering featuring SFTR-compliant and delegated reporting.
In order to implement its new solution to help ease this burden, SIX partnered with Comyno, a consultancy firm based in Frankfurt. When it comes to delegated reporting, SIX has partnered with UnaVista, the trade repository of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).
“Working with SIX was an important milestone in the history of our consultancy firm. The SFTR relevant know-how of our consultants spans from IT relevant topics to business related service aspects,” added Markus Büttner, Founder & Director at Comyno.
“The software systems developed for SFTR could ensure that a solution could always be guaranteed which was an important factor given the tight time schedule. We look forward to collaborate further with SIX.”
