About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Colt Partners NPL to Deliver Time Service Suited to MiFID II

Subscribe to our newsletter

Colt Technology Services is offering financial firms using its colocation services a timestamping capability that more than meets the requirements of Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II).

The company has partnered with the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL) to deliver precise timing capabilities to firms using its colocation services in Equinix data centres in Slough and Interxion facilities in London. This enables firms to timestamp all reportable trades to within one microsecond of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), significantly improving on the smallest 100 microsecond level stipulated by the RTS 25 timing regulation under MiFID II.

The Precision Time Protocol (PTP), based on the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) signal sourced directly from NPL, is being integrated by Colt at the network level, offering a consistent time across multiple trading applications. The company says the service introduced at Equinix and Interxion will be will be rolled out to other UK colocation sites according to customer demand.

Andrew Housden, vice president of capital markets at Colt, comments: “NPL has one of the world’s most accurate time signals, providing our financial markets customers with a highly reliable solution.” NPL’s CsF2 atomic clock is accurate to one second every 158 million years.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: How to move to a modern, component based trading architecture using a Buy AND Build approach

Date: 7 May 2026 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes To remain competitive in today’s electronic markets, firms need trading architectures that support rapid innovation, effortless integration of new capabilities, and the agility to respond to shifting market demands. This is prompting technology leaders to move beyond the traditional...

BLOG

ESMA’s “Data Day” and Regulatory Digitalisation

When ESMA convened its first ‘Data Day’ on 2 December 2025, the agenda title – “Burden reduction in the digitalisation era” – captured a shift that has been building across Europe’s regulatory landscape for several years. While markets been advancing shared data models and machine-executable reporting logic through initiatives such as the Common Domain Model...

EVENT

Buy AND Build: The Future of Capital Markets Technology

Buy AND Build: The Future of Capital Markets Technology London examines the latest changes and innovations in trading technology and explores how technology is being deployed to create an edge in sell side and buy side capital markets financial institutions.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2025 – Thirteenth Edition

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a unique and practical guide to capital markets regulation, regulatory change, and the data and data management requirements of compliance across Europe, the UK, US and Asia-Pacific. This year’s edition lands at a moment of accelerating regulatory divergence and intensifying data focused supervision. Inside,...