The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has confirmed the biggest shake-up of the UK MiFIR transaction reporting regime since Brexit, publishing Policy Statement 26/15 to cut reporting complexity, strip out low-value data fields and narrow the range of instruments firms must report.
According to ACA Group, the new framework takes effect on 3 April 2028, with supervisory flexibility beginning on 3 August 2026. The changes will affect UK and international firms subject to UK MiFIR obligations, along with heads of compliance, CCOs, COOs and transaction reporting teams.
ACA Group recently jumped into the development of how UK transaction reporting has got a major reset.
While the reforms look like a simple reduction in reporting burden, they mark a wider shift in regulatory focus. The FCA is removing requirements it deems low-value for market surveillance, while raising the bar on data quality and reliability for what remains. For compliance teams, the priority moves from volume of reporting to strength of controls.
Scope is narrowing sharply. Reporting will now apply only to instruments traded on UK venues, removing roughly seven million EU-only instruments from the regime. FX derivatives will be dropped entirely, with the FCA pointing to equivalent EMIR data. The regulator has also clarified how firms should assess whether OTC derivatives count as “traded on a trading venue,” giving clearer methodology for comparing reference data.
Conditional Single-Sided Reporting (CSSR) remains the most contentious element. Despite pushback over data-sharing arrangements, contractual protections and cross-jurisdictional consistency, the FCA is proceeding, arguing CSSR can cut duplicate reporting without compromising surveillance access, particularly since most reports lack personally identifiable information.
Reportable fields will fall from 65 to 52, with option characteristics, maturity dates, waiver indicators and short-selling indicators among those scrapped. The default back-reporting period also shortens from five years to three. However, the FCA stresses this is not deregulation: firms must still validate client, trust and natural-person identifiers, and maintain internal consistency across reporting fields.
The FCA has also clarified longstanding grey areas, including what counts as a reportable transaction, execution timing, branch responsibilities, and treatment of fractional and basket instruments.
Although implementation isn’t due until 2028, the FCA and industry advisers are urging firms to start now, reviewing reportability logic, ARM interfaces, onboarding controls and CSSR feasibility ahead of the deadline.
Read the full ACA Group post here.
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