TRAction
Russell Nethercot
19 August 2025
Cross-border financial firms face increasingly complex trade reporting obligations across multiple jurisdictions. Russell Nethercot, general manager for EU and UK at TRAction, explains how regulatory technology is helping institutions navigate EMIR, MiFID II, and SFTR requirements
Image: Russell Nethercot
What challenges are financial firms facing with trade reporting obligations?
The complexity is significant and growing. Different regions have different regulations, so cross-border businesses face multiple regulatory reporting obligations. In Europe alone, we have the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II), Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR), and the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR), each with distinct requirements.
This ties up firm resources that could be better used delivering products and services to clients.
Can you explain the key differences between EMIR, MiFID II, and SFTR?
EMIR focuses on derivative contracts and requires entities to report transactions to a trade repository, clear via central counterparties where there is a mandatory clearing obligation, and implement risk mitigation for non-cleared over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. The EMIR Refit that kicked off last year in both the EU and UK was a really significant change for everyone, bringing in some substantial enhancements.
MiFID II and MiFIR impose transaction reporting obligations for specified transactions in financial instruments where the underlying is traded on a European Economic Area trading venue.
SFTR has fundamentally reshaped the way investment firms report securities lending, repos, buy-sell backs, and margin lending. At TRAction, we have built a specialised SFTR reporting solution tailored to reduce the regulatory burden for investment firms, while ensuring accuracy, transparency, and timeliness.
What are the overarching objectives behind these reporting regimes?
The regulatory authorities have three main goals: enhancing transparency of trade information available to relevant authorities and the public; promoting financial stability; and supporting detection and prevention of market abuse.
These objectives drive the extensive reporting requirements we see across jurisdictions.
How does TRAction help firms manage these obligations?
We specialise in regulatory transaction reporting, processing millions of reportable transactions daily for financial firms, brokers, investment managers, banks, and electricity suppliers.
TRAction provides a full front-to-back reporting service. Whether you are a buy side asset manager, hedge fund, or sell side institution, we support all of these regimes across the full reporting lifecycle.
Our regulatory technology services operate across Europe, Asia Pacific, and Australia, helping firms comply with their reporting obligations without diverting internal resources.
Why is outsourcing trade reporting becoming more attractive to institutions?
Regulatory reporting has become incredibly complex. For cross-border businesses, managing multiple regulatory regimes internally becomes increasingly difficult and let鈥檚 face it, it has become a significant cost to any business.
With our product you are able to get the full service, and by outsourcing to specialists like us, firms can focus on their core business while ensuring compliance across all relevant jurisdictions.
What is your outlook for trade reporting requirements?
We expect continued evolution and more complexity. Regulatory authorities are constantly refining requirements to better achieve their transparency and stability objectives.
The way I see it, the compliance burden will only increase, making specialist regulatory technology absolutely essential for running efficient operations.
Firms need flexible, scalable solutions that can adapt to changing requirements across multiple jurisdictions.
One thing that has become clear is that the one-size-fits-all approach can be difficult to support. While in theory it works, in practice a lot of these are different firms with different trade flows, different perspectives, etc.
I guess that is exactly where we have found our firm thriving 鈥� working with such a diverse client base. I truly believe we are in a fantastic position to keep helping them navigate this landscape.
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