PS23/4: Improving equity secondary markets

Consultation opens
05/07/2022
Consultation closes
16/09/2022
Policy statement
03/05/2023
03/05/2023

We set out our final policy on changes to technical standards and summarise feedback to CP22/12. We also set out our direction of work on improving the resiliency of UK trading venues to outages and on the execution of retail orders.

Read PS23/4 (PDF)

Why we are changing

We aim to enhance execution quality for investors by lowering the cost of trading, reducing market impact and ultimately increasing liquidity. We also want to improve post-trade transparency. 

We have also amended requirements that impose costs on firms but have not delivered benefits to end users. 

Who this applies to 

Our changes will apply to: 

  • trading venues 
  • investment firms 
  • UK branches of overseas firms undertaking investment services and activities 

Our technical standards will also be of interest to Approved Publication Arrangements (APA), law firms, market data and analytics firms, consultancies, retail investors and trade associations. 

Next steps 

Trading venues and investment firms and APAs consolidating trade reports by them, will need to update their systems to comply with the changes to post-trade transparency. This may also impact their systems for transaction reporting. We will consider how to minimise the impact on firms while ensuring that they continue to report transactions correctly. 

Firms that wish to register as a designated reporter will need to submit a notification to us. We will announce further details of this process in due course. 

What will we do next 

We will establish a task force to develop good practices for trading venues and investment firms in the event of a trading venue outage. 

We will consider whether further work is necessary on the Retail Service Provider model.