January 14, 14 - Following the European Securities and Markets Authority's (ESMA's) approval of six trade repositories, there is a start-date of 12 February 2014 for derivatives trade reporting under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR).

From 12 February, entities affected by the EMIR reporting obligations will need to report their trades to one of the newly-authorised repositories.

SWIFT today announces that its customers can take advantage of its practical, flexible solutions for derivatives trade reporting, in order to fulfil their EMIR reporting obligations.

Trade repositories will warehouse derivatives trade records, playing a central role in enhancing derivative market transparency and reducing risks to financial stability. Entities impacted by EMIR can reuse their SWIFT infrastructure and take advantage of standardised messaging solutions to send their trade details to the repositories in the most automated, secure and reliable way. In addition, SWIFT confirmations for FX and metals derivatives can be used to share Unique Trade Identifiers (UTIs), a critical enabler for successful reporting.

Among customers leveraging SWIFT for derivatives trade reporting under EMIR is the Belgian banking and insurance group, Belfius Bank, which will use SWIFT's FileAct messaging service to report its derivatives trades to European trade repository REGIS-TR. Explaining Belfius' choice of SWIFT, Luc Goossens, Project Management, Financial Markets, Belfius Bank, says: "We considered using a web service-based solution to send trade details to REGIS-TR, but we opted for SWIFT FileAct because it offers better availability and reliability, allows us to send large files and enables better error handling through automated message monitoring."

"The February 2014 deadline is not far away, and SWIFT's simple, reliable, automated solutions offer a speedy route for affected entities to get ready to report their derivatives trades," says Joe Halberstadt, Senior Treasury and Derivatives Market Manager at SWIFT. "We are working in close collaboration with a number of the trade repositories to provide these solutions to customers such as Belfius, as part of our wider offering enabling customers to confirm, match, settle and report their derivatives trades."

SWIFT's solutions for trade reporting to repositories

SWIFT offers two options for trade reporting to the repositories. The first option is for reporting parties is to use their existing SWIFT FIN confirmation traffic. Since SWIFT's OTC derivative confirmation messages now include support for all data elements required as part of the EMIR technical standards, financial institutions can use FINInform, SWIFT's FIN Copy solution, to have copies of trade confirmations sent directly to trade repositories. Another option is to use SWIFT's FileAct to report all OTC derivatives asset classes for all data flows. FileAct supports any file format and small and large files.