On 19 November 2018, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) published a report detailing progress by its member jurisdictions in implementing the 2015 recommendations to remove or address legal barriers to the full reporting of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives data to trade repositories (TRs), and to access by authorities (both domestic non-primary authorities and foreign authorities) to trade data held in TRs.

The 2015 recommendations address issues in three primary aspects of trade reporting and transparency: (i) barriers to full trade reporting; (ii) masking; and (iii) regulators’ access to TR data.

The report provides that:

• barriers to full trade reporting: in all but three of the FSB’s 25 member jurisdictions, the recommendations on removing or addressing barriers to full trade reporting have been implemented;
• masking: five FSB member jurisdictions (Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and the US) allow masking of counterparty identifiers for some transactions. The percentage of masked trades by transaction count is relatively low, typically 5% or under, with several under 1%; and
• regulator’s access to TR data: in twelve jurisdictions, changes have been made or are underway to address or remove barriers to access to TR data by foreign authorities and/or non-primary domestic authorities, including legal barriers which have only very recently been removed. Numerous memoranda of understanding and other arrangements have been entered into that allow access to TR data.

A number of supplementary recommendations have been agreed to by the FSB and are described in the report. The FSB intends to continue to monitor implementation of the recommendations, as well as the 2015 Recommendations.