UnaVista, part of the London Stock Exchange Group, has partnered with Delta Capita to offer the consultancy firm鈥檚 Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) testing pack to its buy-side clients ahead of the October go-live date.
SFTR mandates buy-side firms to report transactions from 12 October as part of the third implementation phase.
The first two phases are now both due to come following the postponement of go-live of the regulation from April.
To assist firms in creating solutions that meet the specific requirements of SFTR, Delta Capita created a consortium of sell-side banks to establish a standardised industry test pack in 2019.
Now, UnaVista鈥檚 clients will be able to access the test pack to benefit from an enhanced testing data set, thereby reducing their own testing effort and costs, Delta Capita says.
The test pack addresses the industry鈥檚 challenges by providing instant access to the business scenario model, explains David Field, head of the securities finance practice at Delta Capita.
The test pack is the only one of its kind and 鈥渢ruly innovative,鈥� says Field, adding that 鈥渋t鈥檚 such an obvious way to mutualise costs across the industry we think it sets a new benchmark for industry testing in the future鈥�.
鈥淭his test pack has the backing of the key vendors, the trade associations and the trade repositories,鈥� he tells SLT. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the same test pack as used by many large sell-side firms 鈥� so you can be confident you鈥檙e in good company."
Field says the pack includes all the trade and reference data that firms need for testing, plus expected results, so firms can confidently diagnose issues that need fixing.
Firms can also benchmark how their testing compares against their peer group, he adds.
鈥淚t鈥檚 unlikely any firm will have perfect SFTR reporting on day one, but regulators will focus on the laggards first so the most important thing is not to be an outlier, Field warns. 鈥淔irms that adopt the same approach as the industry leaders will benefit from a certain safety in numbers.鈥�
Elsewhere, Michael Leach, managing director, global sales and business development at UnaVista, adds: 鈥淲e鈥檙e pleased to be able to support UnaVista鈥檚 clients by leveraging Delta Capita鈥檚 testing consortium to bring efficiencies to market participants as they work towards meeting their SFTR reporting obligation.鈥�
Previously, the began user-acceptance testing on Delta Capita鈥檚 standardised industry test pack for SFTR transaction reporting.
Since August, DTCC has since been trialling it with its own SFTR matching and reporting service.
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