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

S3 Offers SEC CAT Solution Ahead of April Reporting Deadline

Subscribe to our newsletter

As reporting to the SEC Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) fast approaches, with large industry participants and small industry participants reporting to the Order Audit Trail System (OATS) due to submit files on April 20, 2020, vendors are finalising solutions to support firms subject to the regulation.

Among them is S3, a provider of regulatory reporting technology – including a specialism in SEC rules 605 and 606 covering disclosure of order execution and order routing information, trade surveillance, and post-trade analytics. The company has built on its reporting experience to offer a managed service solution for the CAT and is initially working with a major exchange (that it cannot currently name) to provide a service for its hosted brokers. It is also working with its own broker clients and talking to others about provision of the CAT service, which validates exchange files, submits required data to the CAT, and handles any data problems with individual brokers.

Mark Davies, CEO at S3, says the company’s CAT solution is a natural extension of its reporting capabilities, which already handle a substantial volume of data. The company has been working with the exchange’s brokers and FINRA for a few months to get data flowing and is ready for first submissions in April. Davies adds: “With new regulations coming down the pipeline, firms must be prepared to make adjustments that are often costly. S3’s CAT reporting service intends to mitigate that expense and lift much of the compliance burden off our clients.”

S3 prides itself on offering an integrated solution across SEC 605 and 606, transaction cost analysis (TCA), market surveillance, best execution and now the CAT. While its sales focus is only on the US at the moment, it could move into European markets on the strength of its expertise around SEC 605 and 606, rules that are similar to the RTS 27 and 28 reporting standards under Europe’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II).

Coming back to the CAT, Davies notes ongoing industry issues around data privacy, which without an acceptable solution, are likely to escalate ahead of the July 2022 deadline for reporting of customer and account information to the CAT.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: How to make the most of market data

Market data means different things to different organisations, it can be extremely expensive, and often comes with limited licensing contracts. It must be carefully sourced, governed, quality checked, and integrated. And it must be fit for purpose across a number of applications as it is increasingly used to not only meet regulatory obligations, but also...

BLOG

How to Make the Most of Market Data

The challenges of sourcing, managing and monitoring market data are well rehearsed, but solutions are emerging as financial institutions zero in on their requirements, and data vendors respond. Short term, cost, coverage, accuracy, user rights and compliance are key concerns. Longer term, new approaches to market data such as pay-as-you-go pricing, packaged data and software...

EVENT

Data Management Summit London

Now in its 14th 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

Institutional Digital Assets Handbook 2023

After initial hesitancy, interest in digital assets from institutional market participants has grown over the past three to four years. Early focus inevitably centred on the market opportunities presented by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But this has evolved into a broad acceptance of a potentially meaningful role for digital assets in institutional markets. It’s now...