Unavista. owned by the London Stock Exchange Group, was one of the first four trade repositories approved by The European Securities and Markets Authority last week. The registration took effect on November 14 with derivatives reporting due to start on February 12, 2014. Counterparties using an approved trade repository will meet their reporting obligations under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation.
Mark Husler, chief executive of UnaVista, said his platform is the only one approved to report under both the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and the upcoming European Market Infrastructure Regulation.
"UnaVista is already a multi-asset class platform reporting around 1.5 billion trades a year under MiFID," said Husler. "We are the only authorized trade repository which is also an Approved Reporting Mechanism (ARM) under MiFID and there are obvious benefits for clients being able to use the same software for both."
UnaVista grew out of the migration of the exchange's SEDOL Masterfile, the provider of reference data and identification of global multi-asset class securities, to its platform in 2008.
"We know about regulatory reporting which is very important for the challenges around LEIs and reference data which are the two hot topics in EMIR," added Husler.
At the same time as the SEDOL transfer, Unavista launched the Broker Matching Utility, a reconciliation service for post-trade data to identify differences from the static data and allow clients to solve settlement issues.
"A big differentiator for UnaVista is our experience of management information, reference data and flagging exceptions so that clients can resolve problems very quickly," said Husler.
In 2011 Unavista acquired the transaction reporting system from the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK regulator, and migrated between 400 and 500 clients within six months. "We are used to onboarding clients very quickly," added Husler
Although Unavista in owned by the London Stock Exchange, less than 10% of its existing customers are also LSE Group clients.
"ESMA requires our trade repository to be a stand-alone platform, segregated from our existing services,"added Husler. "Saying that, we have seen a lot of interest from existing clients, with a number signed up prior to the ratification last week."
Existing clients have to separately sign up for the new trade repository and Husler declined to comment on how many have done so.
Univista's customer base includes Tier 1 US fund managers with large European operations, who have to report under the Dodd-Frank financial reform act in their home market.
"It is wrong to assume that you can pick up the Dodd-Frank model and apply it to Europe," said Husler. "There are a number of big differences such as Dodd-Frank being single-side reporting and does not include ETDs."
EMIR requires both sides to a trade to report the transaction to a trade repository. Husler said some buy side firms want to control the reporting process while others are happy to delegate reporting to their main broker. "UnaVista can support either of these models and also partial delegation where the client has access to reports and can enrich data," he said.
In addition, Univista has a Rules Engine service which allows it to transform data into the right format for clients who may have multiple systems across asset classes and are not in a position to complete the 80-fields required for financial reporting.
"In 12 to 36 months it will be interesting to look back to see how the landscape has changed as each trade repository has its own business model. At this stage clients are choosing one repository but that may change in the future," said Husler.