The Financial Conduct Authority published its July 2025 Market Watch newsletter setting out supervisory observations from its oversight of the UK MiFID transaction reporting regime, focusing on remedial timelines, back reporting, and transaction reporting errors and omissions notifications. It asks firms to integrate the observations into existing processes and states it does not expect the guidance to create additional burden. Supervision has identified persistent inefficiencies in some firms’ operational frameworks, with the FCA expecting mature processes to identify, address and disclose reporting issues in a timely and accurate way. Remedial timelines are assessed case by case, but the FCA highlighted delays driven by slow submission of remediation plans, missed deadlines, unjustified extension requests, limited measurable progress between check-ins, and repeated revisions to root cause or impacted volumes, often linked to siloed ownership, insufficient resourcing, symptom-focused fixes, reactive compliance culture and weak governance. On back reporting, it warned that delays can undermine the reliability of transaction data and hinder market abuse detection and investigation, illustrating risks through case studies including incomplete correction of historic reports after a fix, weak risk-based prioritisation across multiple issues, inaccessible historic data following system migrations, and deterioration in business-as-usual reporting when back reporting consumes resources. From a review of 241 breach notifications received in Q1 2025, the FCA reported varying quality across key fields including issue and root-cause descriptions, impacted transaction volumes, relevant periods, back reporting plans, and explanations of weaknesses in systems and controls, and it set out best-practice expectations for clearer and more decision-useful disclosures. It has introduced a quality flag in its case management and record keeping and will continue to monitor notification quality.
Financial Conduct Authority 2025-07-21
Financial Conduct Authority issues supervisory expectations on UK MiFID transaction reporting remediation back reporting and breach notifications
The FCA's July 2025 Market Watch newsletter highlights inefficiencies in UK MiFID transaction reporting. It emphasizes timely, accurate reporting and warns against delays affecting data reliability and market abuse detection. The FCA reviewed breach notifications, noting varying quality and setting best-practice expectations for clearer disclosures.