The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. (ISDA) today announced the launch of UTIPrefix.org, a service that enables counterparties to obtain a unique trade identifier (UTI) prefix in order to create UTIs for the reporting of derivatives trades.
Significant progress has been made in improving the transparency of derivatives activity in recent years, but major challenges remain, in part because standardized reporting formats have not been adopted quickly or broadly enough. This has created problems for regulators in aggregating data within and across jurisdictions.
UTIPrefix.org enables derivatives users to apply a standard methodology to generate a 10-character UTI prefix using their 20-character legal entity identifier (LEI) code. A UTI prefix is distinct to the party generating the UTI and, along with a transaction identifier, ensures each reportable transaction is unique.
The UTIPrefix.org service facilitates industry best practice for the generation of UTIs, as outlined in ISDA’s paper Unique Trade Identifier (UTI): Generation, Communication and Matching. The paper highlights that the use of a single UTI value for global reporting is essential for accurate data aggregation and analysis. ISDA’s UTI standard addresses the construct of a UTI and establishes a hierarchy and logic for determining which party generates the UTI. The standard also addresses the challenges of UTI communication and assignment for a variety of transaction flows.
“UTIPrefix.org strengthens the value of ISDA’s UTI standard, making it the premiere candidate for endorsement by regulators as the global UTI standard for regulatory reporting,” said Scott O’Malia, ISDA’s Chief Executive Officer. “ISDA looks forward to continued collaboration with market participants and global regulators to achieve consensus and endorsement of data standards that promote reporting efficiencies and facilitate global data aggregation.”
UTIPrefix.org demonstrates ISDA’s commitment to the global harmonization of regulatory reporting data standards. ISDA’s research paper Improving Regulatory Transparency of Global Derivatives Markets: Key Principlesoutlines principles for standardizing, aggregating and sharing data across borders.
UTIPrefix.org is available to ISDA members and non-members alike at no cost. WM Datenservice provides the global LEI data for the website.
