This week sees the deadline for UK public and private sector organisations required to register their businesses under the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC) roll around and 2,598 have signed up thus far, according to yesterday’s figures from the UK Environment Agency. Firms have until 30 September (Thursday) to register for the new mandatory carbon emissions trading scheme, which involves challenging data management requirements such as the tracking of the reference data on the assets firms hold and those held by their subsidiary entities.
Under the new scheme, which kicked off in April this year, the UK Environment Agency is asking firms to register their organisational structure in order to determine their carbon emission allowances. Reference Data Review noted in August that only 1,229 firms had registered at that point, the number of which has more than doubled since. It seems that more have been compelled to go through the reference data nightmare of determining their current standing with regards to their carbon allowance by registering what they own and where.
As noted by Citi’s senior vice president and counsel Meredith Gibson back in July, financial institutions have been forced to develop standalone CRC data management projects in order to meet the requirements at a time when they are being bombarded with other regulatory driven data management projects. She explained that the reference data project doesn’t directly involve customers or instruments such as securities and therefore has to stand alone from Citi’s other regulatory driven projects.
Much like the other reference data projects going on around entity data tracking and risk management data quality, there is also no one size fits all solution to the challenges. The scale and complexity of the projects depends on how each institution has structured itself and the type of activities it is involved in. Those firms with a lot of investment activity will probably find it trickier than those with a simpler corporate structure. Hence Citi, as a global entity with a number of siloed legacy systems, has been working with a “magic circle” law firm to meet the challenges.
A number of large buy and sell side firms have already registered with the agency, including Aberdeen Asset Management, Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, Citi and HSBC, but many names are still missing from the list.
More details on how to register can be viewed on the CRC website here.
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