The Financial Conduct Authority published a technical note explaining how it constructed the cost-benefit analysis supporting its proposed framework for a UK equity consolidated tape, setting out the modelling used to estimate demand, benefits and commercial viability across four tape-data scenarios. The approach is based on an April 2025 survey that tested demand at GBP 50, GBP 200 and GBP 500 per user per month, with responses cleaned for consistency and used to estimate scenario-specific demand curves via a quadratic regression. The FCA then scaled demand to the wider population of equity market participants (excluding those with de minimis trading volumes) and adjusted for expected take-up over a five-year contract period, using a benchmark estimate of 50,000 existing level 1 data users and adoption scenarios where 25%, 50% or 75% of those users switch to the tape over time. Under the survey-based scaling, Scenario 2 at GBP 50 per month implies 9,171 tape users, including 1,819 additional users. Viability is assessed by comparing projected revenues to cost ranges (plus a 10% margin), producing break-even prices including, for Scenario 2, GBP 16.4 to GBP 43.5 per month depending on costs, and indicating that Scenario 3 and Scenario 4 do not break even at some mid-to-upper cost estimates. The note also explains the benefit calculations for additional users (consumer and producer surplus) and additional data use, including assumptions on the incremental value of access to specific venue data and the valuation of added pre-trade depth in Scenarios 3 and 4 using level 1 versus level 2 pricing benchmarks.

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