The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) is requesting all Cyprus Investment Firms (CIFs) to report their 2018 trading volume for all classes of instruments.
March 27, 2019. | AtoZ Markets - The Cypriot authority announced on Tuesday that CIFs are to fill a new form that gives details of their entire 2018 trading volume. CIFs are required to break down volumes into asset sub-classes and include all trading undertaken including those with retail traders, professional traders and eligible counterparties. In addition, the form also requires that these firms report on margin trading including the leveraged amount. For example, if a trader's initial fund was $1000 with leverage 1:100, the total amount of $100,000 should be reported by the broker as the leveraged amount.
This is not the end of the information required to be filled in the form. The brokerage firms are also expected to differentiate between trades that their clients executed on their own accord from those they did on their behalf. However, this space on the form is expected to be left blank by the market makers to avoid double counting. Market makers should report their activities within the client trading section instead.
CySec gives no reason yet
Meanwhile, the regulatory body did not state any reasons for this exercise. This could be the regulator's way of reevaluating its product intervention measures following the recent ESMA and AMF's restrictions on CFD and binary options brokers. It could also be part of the information needed by the regulators to bring new changes to the investor compensation plans.
This is not the first time that the CySEC collected trading volume data from CIFs. The volume data collected in the past were used to strengthen regulatory oversights. The reason this time around is not yet known.
When is the deadline?
There will not be reminders for brokers on this new directive according to a statement released on the CySEC's website. The statement stated 12th April as the deadline for the brokers to submit these requirements. It added that no extensions beyond the deadline date will be given and failure to submit will result in fines.
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