SEC Grants 'No-action' Relief for SWIFT's Electronic Trade Confirmation Message
SWIFT has announced that its request to the US SEC for ‘no-action’ relief regarding the MT515 electronic trade confirmation message format has been granted. Currently, the MT515 is used by sell-side firms to confirm the details of a securities trade with their buy-side counterparty. The ‘no-action’ relief provides broker-dealers in the US market with the confidence that the SWIFT electronic trade confirmation message can be used to comply with SEC Rule 10b-10, which requires broker-dealers to include certain information about a trade when sending confirmations to buy-side counterparties.
“The SEC granting ‘no-action’ relief to SWIFT’s MT515 message means that broker-dealers have more options for delivering Rule 10b-10 compliant confirmations,” said Thomas Murphy, managing director, Citigroup Global Markets. “This allows the efficient delivery of critical trade confirmation details to our counterparties by eliminating more costly paper-based processes. More importantly, we can reuse existing standards and operational infrastructures.”
As a result of the ‘no-action’ relief, it is anticipated that the SWIFT MT515 message format will be used to replace paper-based and other non-automated confirmation processes for non-DTCC eligible securities and for cross-border trades. In all cases, the sender and recipient remain responsible for data retention under regulations applicable to them.