To be or not to be reported
By Christian Thygesen | Regulatory Reporting Specialist | April 23rd, 2025
For any regulatory transaction reporting, knowing what trades are reportable is obviously a rather central question. For reporting under MiFID II / MiFIR, this is relatively simple to determine – at least on paper. If the instrument traded is traded on a trading venue (ToTV), then it should be reported, even if the trade in question did not take place on a trading venue. The alternative condition is, that the underlying instrument to the trade is traded on a trading venue, then the trade is also reportable, the typical example being an equity-option, where the option may be an OTC-instrument but the underlying stock would be traded on a trading venue (uToTV).
So the rule is simply, that if the instrument trades is (u)ToTV, then the trade is reportable. In theory quite simple, however for derivatives this is not so straightforward. Say you have a future traded on e.g. Eurex. A bank purchases this instrument, turns around and sells it to a client. In economic terms, the two instruments – the one traded on the venue and the one sold to the client – are identical, but still they differ in the sense that the future traded on Eurex will be cleared by a CCP and collateralized, where as the product sold to the customer may not be CCP-cleared and may not be collateralized. So is this “look-alike” identical (and thus reportable) to the exchange traded future or isn’t it? This has remained unclear and debated since MiFID II/MiFIR came into force in early 2018, and that may be the reason why MiFIR II will use different criteria to determine the reportability of an instrument.
For all securities and security-like instruments (and by this I mean certificates, warrants and ETDs) the ToTV logic remains unchanged. For OTC instruments however, the logic changes quite significantly. For interest rate derivatives, only cleared IRS in certain currencies and tenors are reportable. For CDS, only instruments in the 26 Global SIFIs are reportable. For all derivatives, the uToTV criteria remains. This implies that the overwhelming majority of FX and commodity derivatives will no longer be reportable. For CDS’s however, the uToTV criteria has the somewhat strange effect that the first order criteria (only CDS written on the 26 G-SIFI’s) becomes irrelevant, given that all CDS are written on a company issuing either equity or bonds and are thus covered by the second-order uToTV criteria.
The short of the matter is that the simple (u)ToTV criterion for reportability is replaced by a set of criteria which will reduce the number of trades to be reported but will make it more complex to determine which trades are and which trades are not to be reported.
Product Owner Kenneth Brandborg, comments in regards to the enhancement of REGTECHDATAHUB’s capabilities: “It’s our number one priority to deliver customer value by solving specific complications in the everyday regulatory reporting.”