The requirements will apply to banks, building societies and investment firms. These include investment managers, securities and futures firms, operators and trustees of collective investment schemes, venture capital firms and corporate finance firms.
Graeme Ashley-Fenn, FSA director, contact, revenue and information management, said:"Regulatory reporting is a key FSA supervisory tool for identifying risk within the FSA's ARROW framework of risk based supervision. The proposals will align reporting for these industry sectors within that operating framework. Many existing requirements date back to our predecessor regulators and these will be brought up to date for the FSA's needs. Under the proposed changes, the FSA will cease collecting data it no longer needs and will fill gaps in its data collection.
"IRR will make the FSA easier for firms to do business with. Firms will benefit from the reduction of duplication through aligning IRR reporting dates with their financial year-ends. We will continue to engage with the industry during the consultation to ensure we end up with the right reporting requirements for all parties."
This consultation completes the FSA's review of the type and quality of standardised information required from firms and to harmonise reporting formats. The Capital Requirements Directive (CRD) and Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) will be implemented during 2007 and 2008. The FSA has used their introduction as an opportunity to review reporting requirements for the relevant firms. At the same time the FSA has revised its reporting requirements for firms in these sectors that are not affected by CRD or MiFID but where it needed to bring reporting in line with its risk based approach.
The FSA aims to give firms a minimum of 12 months' notice of changes to the reporting requirements. Where shorter notice is required due to the CRD and MiFID timetables, the consultation paper proposes interim arrangements for firms to submit key regulatory reporting data where this relates to Directive-driven changes. This information will be supplemented by allowing firms to continue to submit the existing returns on the 'old' basis during that period. Mandatory electronic reporting (MER) will only apply to the new data as it is phased in and the FSA's systems are developed. The FSA has set up a number of advisory groups made up of trade associations and firms to seek input on the development of the MER system.
