The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has announced it has opened the environment for pre-production testing for the upcoming Securities Financing Transaction Regulation (SFTR).
Despite calls from industry associations for the rules to be delayed, service providers are pushing forward to ready their clients for the upcoming deadline.
For banks and investment firms, the rules to report their repo and securities lending activities will apply from 11 April.
DTCC has subsequently said its environment for pre-production testing is now open to enable code and test production connectivity and submission of messages.
Clients will be able to setup end-of-day reports via DTCC’s portal and view all their reported data and reconciliation results online.
“Critical to SFTR compliance is industry-wide testing, which includes early availability of a test environment to enable clients to submit trade reports to a repository, manage the process and, if required, resubmit rejected reports,” said Mark Steadman, executive director, product development at the DTCC.
“We are encouraged to see that some market participants are expressing interest in pre-production testing and we will be ready as and when our clients are required to go-live.”
The Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) is part of the European Commission’s drive to increase transparency in the practice, with a requirement to report 155 fields of data in the ISO 20022 format.