Bloomberg Data Reporting Services Limited (BDRSL) today announced that it has secured the UK financial regulator’s approval to start testing its ARM and APA services, which allow market participants to meet transparency reporting requirements mandated by the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II).

The Financial Conduct Authority supports industry with a dedicated testing environment dubbed the Market Data Processor system (MDP).

Until the end of this year, the FCA’s approval allows Bloomberg’s BDRSL to demonstrate conformance and compliance with the former’s technical specifications after being on-boarded to the MDP. This includes the service’s Approved Reporting Mechanism (ARM) for transaction reporting and its Approved Publication Arrangement (APA) for trade reporting. The on-boarding process forms part of the regulator’s authorisation and supervisory process for submitting entities.

With the MiFID II regulations coming into effect in less than six months, market participants will face a steep increase of reporting tasks that they need to manage across a wide range of asset classes and within very short timeframes.

Given these headwinds, Bloomberg says that its offering helps clients report transactions in all asset classes via one feed directly through Bloomberg’s Regulatory Hub (RHUB). RHUB helps validate data whilst maintaining consistency throughout the post-trade reporting process by generating and reporting data to regulators in real-time and also make it available for best execution analysis, trade reconciliation and record-keeping.

Alejandro Perez, Global Head of Post-Trade Solutions at Bloomberg, commented: “MiFID II requires more trades and data to be reported across a wide range of asset classes and within very short timeframes. As a provider of ARM services since December 2014, Bloomberg is very well placed to support market participants with these requirements. With this approval, we have taken one more step towards providing firms with the necessary reporting capabilities, and a fully-integrated suite of MiFID II solutions across all their needs and workflows.”