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

MiFID II: One Year On and None the Wiser

Subscribe to our newsletter

By Christian Voigt, Senior Regulatory Advisor, Fidessa

MiFID has achieved the rare feat of becoming a genericized trademark. In the same way that Xerox stands for copy machines in general, MiFID has turned into a synonym for all financial markets regulation. With the scorecard for its first birthday due, whether MiFID II really is ground-breaking, or deserving, remains debatable. However, there is no doubt about its voluminous size. And it is because of this unusual size that even one year on, we are none the wiser.

Firstly, while you could argue that MiFID II successfully changed global market structure due to research unbundling, you could also point out that MiFID II just added another level of mind-numbing box ticking with the introduction of best execution reports. So where does it leave us overall?

And secondly, it’s hard to understand what has happened at a micro-level. For example, we all agree that periodic auctions grew as a result of MiFID II, but what precisely caused this innovation? Was it because of the ban of the Broker Crossing Network, changes to the Systematic Internaliser regime, changes to the tick size or the introduction of the double volume cap?

Since all of those things occurred at the same time, it is virtually impossible to determine causality. It’s a bit like me randomly pushing buttons on my central heating boiler, until the house is warm.

If MiFID II teaches us anything it is that we shouldn’t have such large regulations in the first place. Instead of consulting and negotiating for ten years on texts exceeding 1.7 million paragraphs, how about lawmakers work on a steady stream of smaller changes. Faster time to market, better impact assessment, lower implementation costs, reduced risks, the benefits for everyone could be tremendous.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: How to automate entity data management and due diligence to ensure efficiency, accuracy and compliance

Requesting, gathering, analysing and monitoring customer, vendor and partner entity data is time consuming, and often a tedious manual process. This can slow down customer relationships and expose financial institutions to risk from inaccurate, incomplete or outdated data – but there are solutions to these problems. This webinar will consider the challenges of sourcing and...

BLOG

UK Seen Timing Ratings Regulation With EU Decision

The UK is expected to announce a new regime for overseeing ESG rating providers, a move that comes hard on the heels of a report indicating continued frustration with the metrics among investors. Ministers are expected to unveil their proposals early in 2024, following industry consultations earlier this year and months after the nation’s regulator said it...

EVENT

AI in Capital Markets Summit London

The AI in Capital Markets Summit will explore current and emerging trends in AI, the potential of Generative AI and LLMs and how AI can be applied for efficiencies and business value across a number of use cases, in the front and back office of financial institutions. The agenda will explore the risks and challenges of adopting AI and the foundational technologies and data management capabilities that underpin successful deployment.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2023 – Eleventh Edition

Welcome to the eleventh edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a popular publication that covers new regulations in capital markets, tracks regulatory change, and provides advice on the data, data management and implementation requirements of more than 30 regulations across UK, European, US and Asia-Pacific capital markets. This edition of the handbook includes new...