Today, the BDA submitted its letter to the SEC on MSRB’s proposed rule to establish a new data set of RTRS transaction data exclusively for institutions of higher education. The comment period expires on August 10, 2016. You can view the BDA’s letter here. BDA’s letter opposes the creation of the new data set as it would create unnecessary business risks for broker-dealers. BDA requests that MSRB re-propose the rule to have dealers grouped anonymously by size, as opposed to individually. New Academic Data Set: MSRB has proposed to create an RTRS Academic Data set exclusively available for research purposes made available only to institutions of higher education. This is a follow up to MSRB’s July 2015 request for comment on an academic data set. BDA’s 2015 comment letter can be read here. The proposal still includes an anonymous dealer identifier that will allow academics to research RTRS-reported transactions per dealer. However, based on BDA’s comment letter and other industry comments, the proposal has been amended to include the following features designed to protect dealer identities:
- 36 Month Delay: MSRB’s 2015 proposal included transaction data that was aged by 24 months. The updated proposal includes a 36-month delay.
- Unique Dealer Identifiers per Data Request: Based on a BDA request, each institution that requests data will receive different dealer identifiers for each data set.
