Credit Suisse sent thousands of trades late to trace: Finra

CREDIT Suisse will pay a US$900,000 fine to settle Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) allegations that it reported debt trades late and misapplied key indicators to hundreds of thousands of transactions.

Finra said the bank’s US brokerage reported about 9,000 trades late to its Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine, or Trace, system from November 2015 until this past March. The transactions involved securitised products, corporate debt, and agency debt securities, according to the industry-backed regulator.

Due to coding errors, Credit Suisse also mislabelled a key pricing indicator on 514,000 Trace reports involving US Treasury securities and securitised products, Finra said. The brokerage also allegedly mislabelled a different indicator on 264,000 trades in those securities. Credit Suisse, which didn’t admit or deny the findings, declined to comment.

Many trades have to be reported to the Trace system within 15 minutes of being executed. Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission which oversees Finra, has floated that the time period should be cut to one minute.

Credit Suisse agreed to the fine on Jun 12, and Finra accepted the fine on Jun 23. UBS Group agreed to purchase the bank in March in an emergency rescue brokered by the Swiss government. The deal closed on Jun 12. BLOOMBERG