We want to keep you informed regarding recent updates – or really, lack thereof – related to the Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA).
As a brief refresher, the FDTA was enacted by Congress in December of 2022 and aims to enhance the transparency, accessibility, and usability of financial data by standardizing reporting requirements and leveraging modern technology. It mandates that regulatory agencies adopt common data standards, which will streamline data collection and dissemination processes. At the time of passage, the FDTA included a timeline with specific dates and deadlines so that it could be rolled out in phases. Regulatory agencies were given specific deadlines to comply with the new requirements. The main thrust of our update is the first of the deadlines have come and gone without any action from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
According to a recent article published on The Bond Buyer’s website, “the SEC and seven federal agencies involved in the rulemaking were expected to release a joint Notice for Comment by June 28. The notice marks the first of a multi-stage process that ultimately calls for municipal market issuers to report their financial data in a digitized, machine-readable format, as is currently required in corporate disclosure. The initial notice will outline proposed data standards and so-called legal entity identifiers and ask market participants for comment…as of mid-July, the notice has failed to appear.”
The article from The Bond Buyer goes on to discuss how the SEC appears to have delayed many of the items on its agenda that had been targeted for completion this spring and at this point, there have not been any updates from the SEC or the Treasury Department on when we can expect additional news regarding FDTA.
Please reach out to your M&J advisor for any questions or comments.
Devitt, Caitlin. “First FDTA proposal appears to be delayed.” The Bond Buyer, 15 July 2024, https://www.bondbuyer.com/news/first-fdta-proposal-appears-to-be-delaye
