TRACE and Reg ATS: the changing face of US Treasuries regulation

Nichola Hunter, Chief Operating Officer at LiquidityEdge, explores new regulation coming down the track which will significantly impact broker-dealers in US Treasuries.

Regulatory changes are afoot in the US Treasuries market. While reporting transaction data to regulators has been the norm in the equities market for decades, in October last year the SEC approved FINRA’s new reporting rule requiring UST trades to be reported by the end of the day on which they were executed.

Starting in July this year, all broker-dealers registered with the SEC that are FINRA members must report transactions through the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) system. This is a major development for the UST market and one that will cause no small number of headaches amongst participants. The cost and resourcing implications of such a major change to regulatory reporting cannot be underestimated.

Broadly speaking there are two camps that argue for and against more transparency. While it would be difficult to find anyone willing to argue that increased transparency shouldn’t be encouraged for the purposes of improved regulatory oversight, less certain is the path to real time public dissemination.

Typically, professional trading firms will argue that transparency is required to enhance liquidity, improve best execution processes while reducing overall transaction costs. However, many of the dealers will argue the exact opposite, citing experiences in other markets that attest to a reduction in overall liquidity, widening of the bid/ask spread and the negative impact of transparency on their hedging strategies.

Trade reporting is not the only regulatory burden on the horizon for UST market participants. While the SEC has traditionally exempted platforms that solely trade government securities from its regulatory regime for alternative trading systems, known as Reg ATS, changes in market structure have recently prompted it to change its stance.

Reg ATS was introduced in 1998 to enhance regulatory oversight of off-exchange equities trading and improve the transparency of operations and protections for investors, with the aim of promoting a fair and competitive market. It requires platform operators to register as a broker-dealer and disclose significant details about operations, as well as committing to providing market participants with fair access to its services and liquidity pool.

UST platforms were excluded from the rules at the time due to the unique regulatory framework for government securities in the US, which involves the SEC, Department of the Treasury and federal banking regulators. However, the SEC now believes that market conditions and the broader regulatory environment have evolved to a point where it is appropriate to extend Reg ATS to the UST market. It remains to be seen if the acting or any new SEC chair will pick up the baton and move forward with this change.

At LiquidityEdge we are well positioned to adapt to a potential extension of Reg ATS to UST venues. Our platform is built on tried and tested technology, widely used in the FX market to ensure robust performance and efficient market access. Thus, the technology need to meet many of the requirements of Reg ATS is already built into the fabric of the platform.

LiquidityEdge was designed to meet the evolving needs of US Treasury market participants and facilitate a more orderly and efficient trading environment. Transparency and fair market access play crucial roles in achieving this end goal, and if regulators consult closely with both platform operators and all types of market participants before putting pen to paper, they will help build an appropriate legislative framework for today’s complex US Treasury Market.

For more information, click here for Nichola’s full article.