The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has set out its final rules to simplify transaction reporting and reduce the burden for UK investment firms, trading venues operators, approved reporting mechanisms (ARMs), and other market participants.
The new rules will come into effect on 3 April 2028 and aim to replace the transaction reporting regulation implemented by the Mifir regime in 2018 with ‘a more proportionate, streamlined and agile framework’.
The FCA has confirmed that the changes will remove duplicative or low-value reporting, to allow the regulatory body to leverage accurate high-quality data, reduce the regulatory burden on firms and promote growth and competition across UK markets.
Specifically, the FCA predicts that the new rules will save firms more than £100 million annually.
“Transaction reports are the backbone of our market oversight work – they help us catch financial crime, monitor market stability and supervise firms effectively,” said Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA.
“By taking a smarter, streamlined approach to reporting, we’re giving firms meaningful cost relief while ensuring we continue to receive the accurate, high-quality data that keeps UK markets clean and competitive.”
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The key changes include: reducing transaction reporting fields from 65 to 52 and lowering the period for correcting historical reporting errors from five to three years.
Moreover, the transition will eliminate FX derivatives from reporting requirements – expected to reduce costs for more than 400 firms.
The move will also remove reporting requirements for seven million financial instruments such as equities, bonds and certain derivatives traded on EU trading venues, which is set to save UK firms approximately £32 million every year.
Commenting on these reforms, Mark Steadman, managing director and head of Report Hub at Delta Capita, added: “The FCA has focused on removing reporting requirements that deliver limited supervisory value while preserving the integrity of the transaction reporting regime.
“The exclusion of FX derivatives and the reduction in reportable fields should materially reduce operational complexity and compliance costs for firms, while giving the industry a clear runway to prepare ahead of implementation in 2028.”
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Similar sentiment was also shared by Maria Santos, head trade repositories at SIX, who welcomed the reforms, indicating that they will contribute to ‘a more proportionate reporting regime’.
She added: “Reducing unnecessary reporting while preserving high quality regulatory data will help improve the competitiveness of UK markets.”
The FCA has confirmed that it will publish a draft scheme, validation rules and guidelines for consultation in October 2026.
The regulatory body is also set to adopt a ‘flexible supervisory approach’ to some areas of transaction reporting from 3 August 2026, until the changes come into force in 2028.