Federal financial agencies issued a rule establishing joint technical standards for data submitted to certain financial regulatory agencies on June 12, implementing provisions of the Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA) of 2022.
The newly minted standards are designed to promote interoperability of financial regulatory data across the federal agencies by establishing common identifiers for entities, geographic locations, dates and certain products and currencies, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) press release.
“The establishment of joint data standards across federal financial regulators will help ensure consistent data collection that will both ease burdens for financial institutions and make data more accessible to investors,” SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said.
A principles-based joint standard with respect to data transmission and schema and taxonomy formats was included to allow financial institutions to submit high-quality, machine-readable data to the agencies. The rule states the following:
“Rather than proposing a specific data transmission or schema and taxonomy format, the proposed joint rule provided that, to the extent practicable, a data transmission or schema and taxonomy format should have the following properties derived from the requirements listed in section 124(c)(1)(B) of the FDTA:
- “Render data fully searchable and machine-readable;
- “Enable high quality data through schemas, with accompanying metadata documented in machine-readable taxonomy or ontology models, which clearly define the semantic meaning of the data, as defined by the underlying regulatory information collection requirements, as appropriate;
- “Ensure that a data element or data asset that exists to satisfy an underlying regulatory information collection requirement be consistently identified as such in associated machine-readable metadata; and
- “Be nonproprietary or available under an open license.”
SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda said the move “will be followed by separate rulemaking for agency-specific standards that will further improve the accessibility of financial data.”
The following agencies have coordinated on the creation of the joint standards: the SEC, the Federal Reserve, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the U.S. Treasury Department, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union Administration and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The joint rule is scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1 but will not change any reporting requirements without further action by the agencies.