After a considerable delay, a timetable for the implementation of the reporting obligations relating to the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (“SFTR”) has now been finalised.

The SFTR, originally published in 2015, is an initiative aimed at improving transparency and monitoring of so-called ‘shadow banking’ activity i.e. bank-like credit intermediation that is not subject to the same regulation as more traditional banking activities. Other aspects of SFTR, such as investor transparency requirements, took effect in 2016. However the reporting obligations were delayed pending the completion of the delegated acts containing the detail of these obligations.

The reporting requirement relates to securities financing transactions (“SFT”). A SFT is defined as: (i) a repurchase transaction; (ii) securities or commodities lending and securities or commodities borrowing; (iii) a buy-sell back transaction or sell-buy back transaction; (iv) a margin lending transaction.
The reporting regime is very similar to that currently in place under EMIR (with respect to over-the-counter derivatives). Details of any SFT concluded by a ‘counterparty’ to a SFT must be reported to a registered trade repository on a T+1 basis.
‘Counterparties’ includes financial institutions such as:

• Investment firms subject to MiFID and credit institutions that have a reporting commencement date of 11 April 2020, and
• Alternative investment funds and UCITS (plus their management companies, as applicable) that have a reporting commencement date of 11 October 2020.

The reporting obligation applies to SFTs that are conducted after the relevant reporting commencement date, or were concluded before this date if they remain outstanding and either the remaining maturity exceeds 180 days or the STF has an open maturity and remains outstanding 180 days after the date.

The reporting data items are divided into four sections as follows:

• Counterparty data (18 items)
• Loan and collateral data (99 items)
• Margin data (20 items)
• Re-use, cash reinvestment and funding sources data (18 items).

Further reading:

• SFTR (regulation): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32015R2365&from=EN
• SFTR delegated regulation, including technical standards on reporting requirements: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L:2019:081:FULL&from=EN