FCA Begins Review on Data in Wholesale Markets

The FCA is reviewing the use and value of data and advanced analytics in wholesale financial markets. These are used by firms to trade, make investment decisions, to evaluate positions and to provide other products and services. The FCA aims to understand whether users have concerns with the way this data is being sold.

The scope of the review includes both FCA regulated and connected, non-regulated activities and firms, allowing the FCA to examine how the business activities of non-regulated firms may affect competition in markets that the FCA regulates. 

The FCA used its Call for Input (CFI), which focused on trading data, benchmarks and market data vendor services in wholesale markets, to:

• better understand how data, advanced analytics and innovations are being accessed and used;
• better understand the value offered to market participants and whether they are competitively sold and priced; 
• determine whether users have concerns with the way trading data, benchmarks and vendor services are priced and sold; and
• determine whether further work is required to address any other harm that it identifies.

The CFI would have been of particular interest to stakeholders across the wholesale sector, in particular, suppliers, buyers and users of data, and related products and services. The CFI invited comments about the changing use of data and analytical techniques across all wholesale financial markets. This will help the FCA to understand where the growing use of data and advanced analytical techniques is having, or may in the future have, an impact on wholesale markets.

The CFI closed on May 1, 2020. A Feedback Statement will be published in Autumn 2020, which will set out the FCA’s findings and any next steps.

For further information, click here.