Sterling Trading Tech Gets FINRA Approval as CAT Reporting Agent

Sterling Trading Tech announced today in Chicago that it has been certified by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) as an authorised CAT (Consolidated Audit Trail) Reporting Agent.

CAT, which was built by FINRA and a number of US exchanges, is a database that was designed to collect and identify every order, cancellation, modification and trade Execution for equities and options listed on exchanges across the United States.

Sterling Trading Tech was certified by FINRA following rigorous CAT beta-testing in FINRA’s test environment, the company said in its statement today.

In particular, the compliance, risk and infrastructure solutions company completed file submissions in the production environment for all clients that have been approved by the regulator for production reporting.

Commenting on the announcement, Erik Schmidt, Sterling Trading Tech Managing Director of Client Services said in the statement: “Our team has dedicated hours of time and resources toward receiving this certification from FINRA. We’ve stayed ahead of the FINRA implementation schedule in order to be as prepared as possible to serve as the designated CAT reporting agent for our clients.”

CAT reporting delayed amid COVID-19

As Finance Magnates reported, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has yet again pushed back the date for when broker-dealers will need to report data to the CAT, allowing firms to instead focus their efforts on dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having on their businesses.

In a statement published on April, the US regulator said that it had voted in favour of issuing two exemptive orders in which it will move the CAT implementation forward, with the first action required on the 22nd of June, 2020.

“With the significant increase of Volatility and volume of trades, we understand the importance for regulators and our clients to more efficiently track activity in eligible securities throughout the U.S. markets,” added Farid Naib, CEO of Sterling Trading Tech in the statement. “We’re eager to make sure that our clients, who are obligated to submit to FINRA, can start production environment reporting.”