Bloomberg Expands Regulatory Reporting Suite with RegTek Buy

Bloomberg has acquired regulatory reporting software provider RegTek.Solutions to expand its services to multiple jurisdictions and cover more regulatory requirements.

With the purchase, Bloomberg aims to offer more regulatory reporting around the European Market Infrastructure Regulation, the Market in Financial Instruments Directive and the Dodd-Frank Act, as well as for regimes of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, by the first quarter of next year. It will also be able to provide reconciliation for quality assurance of reporting, allowing Bloomberg to determine which regulatory schemes and jurisdictions a transaction has to be reported to.

Alejandro Perez, global head of post-trade solutions at Bloomberg, says the company’s goal with this acquisition is to provide a more comprehensive solution to clients given how complex regulations have become.

“This does give us a more comprehensive suite of regulatory products and more jurisdictions that we can cover for our clients—both clients that use our order management system and external clients as well,” Perez says. “Our position is that we can be a vehicle for clients to determine reporting eligibility, data accuracy and completeness for their transactions. It also lets clients outside of Bloomberg assess the completeness and quality of their own reporting or the reporting performed by others on their behalf.”

He adds that the RegTek acquisition also gives Bloomberg the ability to validate and enrich data for reporting and reconcile information.

Bloomberg already offers a Mifid II regulatory solution and has around 600 clients using it, but the company hopes that the RegTek acquisition will accelerate its ability to provide more regulatory reporting options. Perez says Bloomberg no longer has to build its own rules engine for these regulations and plug already established rules engines into its system.

RegTek’s suite of products will be integrated into Bloomberg’s Regulatory Reporting Hub (RHUB) by 2020. Perez says current RegTek clients will still be able to use its platform.

Eventually, Bloomberg hopes to provide regulatory solutions for upcoming regulatory schemes like the Securities Financing Transaction Regulation (SFTR) and the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), both of which are expected to be implemented in April 2020.

Perez says that Bloomberg will produce an offering around the CAT if there is customer demand. RegTek announced in January that is developing a solution for SFTR and has hired Chris Cornish as a consultant specialist on the regulation to help build its offering.

Perez says Bloomberg is actively investing in the post-trade space as it sees strong potential there.

“Post-trade is an exciting area for us. We don’t want to enter spaces where we have to fight for market share and we see regtech as a nascent area, where we’re seeing more and more innovation and it’s getting more attention. It was really Mifid II that I think tipped the scale for everyone, including the buy-side, to pay attention to regtech,” he says.