Financial Conduct Authority flags UK EMIR Refit reporting gaps and steps up monitoring of breach notifications

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a Market Watch review of UK EMIR Refit reporting one year after implementation, setting out supervisory observations and expectations for firms reporting derivatives under Article 9 of UK EMIR. The update focuses on completion of legacy trade uplift, weaknesses in change and vendor management that affected reporting quality, and what the FCA views as under-reporting of errors and omissions through breach notifications. A six-month transition period to update outstanding derivative trades entered into before 30 September 2024 ended on 31 March 2025, with 95% of reports uplifted by the deadline, but 4.81% of trades on the trade state report not uplifted. The FCA observed a small number of counterparties maintaining non-uplifted trades after the strict schema took effect, meaning those trades could no longer be reported and the counterparty breached its reporting obligation. It also identified post-implementation issues affecting 19% of counterparties, and found 1.45% of UK reporting counterparties have failed to report derivative trades entirely since the new requirements came into effect, citing inadequate resource planning and increased reliance on third-party vendors as the main drivers. While vendors may submit or enrich reports, the FCA reiterates that responsibility for complete and accurate reporting remains with the counterparty and expects breach notifications where vendor-related issues create material accuracy, completeness or timeliness problems; since go-live it has received breach notifications covering 267 distinct reporting issues, which it considers lower than expected. Over the next 12 months, the FCA’s priority is to improve overall UK EMIR data quality by working with industry, increasing its focus on reconciliation rates, closely monitoring the volume, quality and timeliness of breach notifications and engaging with firms that fall short, and assessing counterparties’ systems and controls including their ability to correct errors across both live and matured trades.