FCA Consults on Guidance and Transitional Provisions for the New UK Transaction Reporting Regime

The Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) has published a consultation paper (“CP26/34”) on preparing for the new UK transaction reporting regime, together with a draft schema and validation rules published on its Market Data Processor (“MDP”) webpage.

CP26/34 follows Policy Statement PS26/15, which set out the FCA’s new transaction reporting rules in MAR 13, MAR 14 and MAR 15. These will replace the UK Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (“UK MiFIR”) transaction reporting framework from 3 April 2028, following HM Treasury’s planned repeal of the relevant legislation. CP26/34 consults on guidance for a new Transaction Reporting User Pack (“User Pack”), transitional provisions and consequential amendments to the Handbook and Technical Standards.

Transaction Reporting User Pack

The User Pack will consolidate existing guidance, clarifications and examples in a single resource. From 3 April 2028, it will replace the EU Level 3 materials currently relied on (specifically: ESMA’s guidelines on transaction reporting, order record keeping and clock synchronisation, the ESMA Q&A on MiFIR data reporting and ESMA’s opinion on “traded on a trading venue”). 

CP26/34 consults on seven areas of new guidance:

• client indicator field: populating MAR 14 fields 8 and 17, which replace the “country of the branch” fields, from the perspective of the executing entity;
• conditional single-sided reporting: how the optional model allocates responsibilities between sending and receiving firms, with a sending firm acting as principal reported as buyer or seller and its clients reported where it acts in any other capacity;
• meaning of a “transaction”: examples supporting MAR 14.3.1G(7) on acquisitions and disposals across derivative types, framed by reference to changes in economic exposure and covering notional increases and decreases and partial and full terminations;
• branch execution: whether a transaction is executed through a UK branch depends on the wider supervisory, governance and operational arrangements, not the trader’s location alone;
• equity swaps: populating MAR 14 Field 31 (Price) using the reference price of the direct underlying instrument rather than the financing spread, and structuring reports following removal of the SwpIn and SwpOut tags;
• strike price: reporting “NOAP” in Field 48 where the strike price cannot be determined at execution, as distinct from a nil strike price; and
• package transactions: package transactions do not require a single price or simultaneous execution; package identifiers link the legs, and “NOAP” is reported in Fields 31 and 38 where a leg or package price cannot be derived.

Transitional Provisions

The FCA proposes a new chapter, MAR TP 5, applying to transaction reporting firms and operators of qualifying trading venues. Transactions executed between 31 March 2028 and 2 April 2028 may be reported under UK MiFIR before 3 April 2028 or, if submitted on or after that date, in the MAR 14 format. Equivalent principles would apply to instrument reference data and to venue reports under Article 26(5) of UK MiFIR. Subject to HM Treasury amending the underlying legislation, the FCA is also considering removing instruments tradeable only on EU trading venues from the FCA’s Financial Instrument Reference Data System before 3 April 2028.

Consequential Amendments

CP26/34 also proposes consequential amendments to the Glossary, COBS, MAR, REC, SYSC and related Technical Standards to reflect the replacement of the relevant parts of UK MiFIR by MAR 13, MAR 14 and MAR 15, including removal of the short selling flags from the record-keeping requirements in COBS 11.5A.3R and Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/589. The FCA does not expect firms to make changes in response to the updated cross-references.

Next Steps

Comments on CP26/34 are due by 6 November 2026. The FCA will consult on the full User Pack in Q1 2027 and publish the final version by 3 April 2027. It will notify firms when the draft schema and validation rules are available for testing in the MDP Industry Test Environment. The new regime comes into force on 3 April 2028.

CP26/34 is available here.

For further information on recent developments in this area, please see our previous article on PS26/15 available here.