Do not adjust your (transaction reporting) clock

This weekend, the UK clocks spring forward to British Summer Time. While you may need to adjust the clocks and watches at home, please remember that the time fields for MiFIR trade and transaction reporting and EMIR trade reporting should be populated in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Firms were required to report in UK local time under MiFID I but this is no longer the case for MiFIR transaction reporting.

The regulators are not likely to have any sympathy if you make errors following these time transitions as they have warned firms of such mistakes in Market Watch 59:

“The time when the transaction was executed should be reported in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). We continue to see errors in transaction reports when UK clocks transition to and from British Summer Time, as well as errors driven by inaccurate clock synchronisation. Firms should have arrangements in place to ensure consistent and accurate reporting of trading date and time.”

How Kaizen can help

As part of our ReportShield™ quality assurance services, we can run a number of tests to detect instances where the wrong time has been populated. Our accuracy testing service can test all fields in all reports submitted over a given period to give you confidence that your reporting is complete and accurate. For more details or a discussion with one of our regulatory experts, please contact us. 

Pub quiz trivia

It may appear strange that the official abbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time is ‘UTC’ rather than ‘CUT’. This abbreviation arose from a desire to use the same abbreviation in all languages. Whilst the abbreviation ‘CUT’ makes sense for English speakers, French speakers advocated ‘TUC’ for ‘temps universel coordineé’. In the end, they agreed to compromise on ‘UTC’, which doesn’t make sense in either language…

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