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

ICMA Ltd Plans Data Products, Extension Of TRAX2 to More Instruments

Subscribe to our newsletter

Data products will be at the heart of a new raft of offerings being developed by ICMA Ltd, the market services division of the International Capital Market Association (ICMA).

In an effort to more effectively utilise the data assets it has acquired through its provision of the TRAX trade matching and transaction reporting system for over-the-counter instruments, ICMA Ltd has kicked off a programme to determine how it could better meet its clients’ market data needs, according to its newly appointed director of product management Graeme Austin.

“ICMA Ltd is at the heart of fixed income data in the capital markets,” Austin told Reference Data Review. “For many years we have been collecting end-of-day pricing and real-time quotes for fixed income instruments and supplying them to other vendors. My role is to talk to our subscribers and find out how we might be able to manage this data better, add value to it, so as to create new services to meet their needs.”

ICMA Ltd is also focusing on how to provide further tools to help its clients in their risk mitigation efforts, he adds. “Another aspect of my role is to examine how we might extend TRAX2 to other sectors that are exposed to increased risk. We have already extended our matching capabilities to cover repos and to include the hedge fund community within this service.” The practice of affirming and confirming OTC deals as early as possible in the trade lifecycle is a well-accepted method of reducing the risk of such transactions.

Austin is building a new product management team at ICMA Ltd, and will be working to formulate its future product strategy for the remainder of this year and early next, with a view to presenting a roadmap for development by the end of Q1 2008.

TRAX2 has also received approval from the UK Financial Services Authority as an Approved Reporting Mechanism (ARM) under MiFID, following completion of testing with both the FSA and its subscribers, according to ICMA Ltd. “Unlike many other systems TRAX2 has a proven capability of reporting to multiple regulators in Europe already,” Austin says. “In light of MiFID we have been in continuous dialogue with other competent authorities and are now fast tracking TRAX2 through other jurisdictions.”

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: End-to-End Lineage for Financial Services: The Missing Link for Both Compliance and AI Readiness

8 October 2025 10:00am ET | 3:00pm London | 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 Minutes The importance of complete robust end-to-end data lineage in financial services and capital markets cannot be overstated. Without the ability to trace and verify data across its lifecycle, many critical workflows – from trade reconciliation to risk management – cannot be...

BLOG

Slaying the Monolith: A Pragmatist’s Guide to Modernising Trading Architecture

For decades, trading technology has been haunted by large, intricate, all-in-one applications that power core business functions, aka the monolith. While once a necessity, these systems have become a source of immense friction. They are brittle, expensive to maintain, and notoriously slow to change, creating a chasm between business demands for agility and IT’s capacity...

EVENT

Data Management Summit London

Now in its 16th year, the Data Management Summit (DMS) in London brings together the European capital markets enterprise data management community, to explore how data strategy is evolving to drive business outcomes and speed to market in changing times.

GUIDE

The DORA Implementation Playbook: A Practitioner’s Guide to Demonstrating Resilience Beyond the Deadline

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) has fundamentally reshaped the European Union’s financial regulatory landscape, with its full application beginning on January 17, 2025. This regulation goes beyond traditional risk management, explicitly acknowledging that digital incidents can threaten the stability of the entire financial system. As the deadline has passed, the focus is now shifting...