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[ I N 47% 38% 2% Perfect It’s been okay, but we had to work hard to get to this point Too early to tell D E P T H | M I F I D I I ] So... how’s it been so far? 6% 6% Not great I’ve quit my job due to stress and I’m just here for the free lunch Source: Audience poll at The TRADE’s MiFID II: Check In event He added that volumes were slightly lower in the first week of implementation, although there were expectations for this to occur and has since seen activity pick up again. The most noticeable change for McLoughlin has been around reporting requirements, but even this hasn’t been too much of a burden to bear so far. “The only real change in day-to-day operations is ensuring we have our approved publication arrangement (APA) up and open at all times on our desktops in case there are trades we need to report ourselves. Even then, there have so far been only a few cases where we have had to do this,” he said. Reporting concerns Changes to trade and transaction reporting processes under MiFID II have proven to be one of the most contentious and complicated parts of the new regulatory regime, requiring firms to process vast quantities of new data, and establish and maintain relationships which had previously not existed to ensure reporting runs smoothly. “Day-to-day there has been a lot of system checking to make sure they are working as expected,” said Neil Bond, head of trading at Ardevora Asset Management. “There are extra fields we are getting now so we need to make sure brokers are populating them correctly, the data is feeding Issue 55 // TheTradeNews.com // 37