Britain’s financial watchdog to investigate competition problems in trade data market

BRITAIN’S Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will launch a study to measure possible competition problems in the market for trading data, the watchdog said in a statement on Thursday (Mar 2).

Competition in some parts of the wholesale data market is “not working as well as it should”, the FCA said.

The trading data market is where investors buy information about what is happening in financial markets, including what prices assets are being sold at, in order to make decisions.

Concentration among few firms leaves investors with little choice over who they buy data from, resulting in additional costs for data users which “are likely to be passed on to UK retail investors and savers” the FCA said.

The study will investigate possible competition problems in the market for benchmarks, credit ratings data and market data vendor services, the FCA said.

If it finds evidence of competition problems in any of these markets, the FCA could look to address them with “rule changes”, the statement said.

The watchdog is currently working with the government to develop a way to collect wholesale data across the market and distribute it in a standardised feed, a system called “consolidated tapes”, the statement said. REUTERS