Washington, D.C., November 8, 2017 – SIFMA today issued the following statement from Randy Snook, executive vice president, business policies and practices, on its letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission requesting a delay in the Consolidated Audit Trail compliance deadline:

“SIFMA is requesting a delay in the CAT compliance deadline in light of our ongoing concerns with the CAT development plan, which does not adequately address SIFMA’s longstanding priorities for establishing an effective and secure CAT.  Specific challenges with the current plan that must be addressed include a governance structure that does not give the industry a meaningful voice, a rushed implementation schedule that is simply not feasible, and proposals to eliminate duplicative regulatory reporting systems that are not sufficiently aggressive. Further, SIFMA continues to have material concerns regarding CAT data security that must be addressed before moving forward with development and data collection.

“Consider that once completed, the CAT would be the world’s largest data repository for securities transactions. Every day the system would ingest 58 billion records – orders, executions and quotes for the equities and options markets – and maintain data on over 100 million customer accounts and their unique customer information. At least 3,000 individual users would have access to this information. In light of increasing cyber risk, we urge regulators to study the costs and benefits to determine if the collection, storage, and use of personally-identifiable information (PII) is necessary.”

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SIFMA is the voice of the U.S. securities industry. We represent the broker-dealers, banks and asset managers whose nearly 1 million employees provide access to the capital markets, raising over $2.5 trillion for businesses and municipalities in the U.S., serving clients with over $18.5 trillion in assets and managing more than $67 trillion in assets for individual and institutional clients including mutual funds and retirement plans. SIFMA, with offices in New York and Washington, D.C., is the U.S. regional member of the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA). For more information, visit http://www.sifma.org.