Subcommittee Working Groups to Present Interim Findings Aimed at Creating Universally Acceptable Standards for Complex Financial Products
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announces that on September 30, 2011, the Subcommittee on Data Standardization of the CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee (the “Subcommittee”) will hold its second public meeting at the Commission’s headquarters in Washington, DC. This meeting will provide the four Subcommittee working groups comprised of qualified representatives from government, industry, academia, information technology and information systems an opportunity to publicly present interim findings on universal product and legal entity identifiers, standardization of machine-readable legal contracts, semantics, and data storage and retrieval.
The Subcommittee was established in August of this year to develop recommendations for creation of a standardized reference data depository representing the universe of legal and financial terms utilized in describing, defining, and valuing the various derivatives and other financial instruments which are presently and in the future may be traded on and off of regulated exchanges.
“This standard setting process is relevant to the rulemaking process as the Commission develops new mandates and requirements for the reporting and disclosure of massive amount of new market data. Failure to use a common metric risks misapplication and misunderstanding of critical market information and will be a waste of resources for both the regulators and the market participants. We have a narrow window between now and the end of the rulemaking process to develop cost effective and useful data standards to describe and communicate complex financial products, and I intend to leverage the work of the subcommittee to ensure our rules apply these data conforming recommendations,” said Commissioner Scott D. O’Malia, chairman of the Technology Advisory Committee.
The Subcommittee meeting will be held in the Conference Center at the CFTC’s Headquarters, Three Lafayette Centre, 1155 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC. The discussion will be open to the public with seating on a first-come, first-served basis.
Members of the public also may listen by telephone and should be prepared to provide their first name, last name and affiliation.
