Matching Reports Across Different Time Zones

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Status: Best Practice Finalised, Last Updated: 26/04/2021

Question:
How will counterparts in different time zones reconcile time and date fields within SFTR?

Best Practice:
All date and time fields should be reported in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC).

For Field 2.12 (Execution Timestamp), timestamps are typically logged for each trade as they are booked in the trade capture systems, not necessarily when the trade was agreed with the counterparty. Therefore there may be discrepancies between the two timestamps, which cannot be amended due to the nature of trade capture systems.

In discussing this with the ISLA SFTR Working Group, the group contemplated creating a new field to upload timestamp data in case of breaks with counterparties, as they assume all will be using the same interpretation of the timestamp, i.e. when the trade was booked.

Reporting participants will need to be careful to use UTC to report their timestamps from their systems to avoid breaks where counterparties are in different time zones.

Also, see related best practise SFTR-192 and SFTR-236 . (SFTR-208)