The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced new plans to tackle competition problems with the trade data market.

A new report from the regulator has suggested that competition in some parts of the wholesale data market is “not working as well as it should”.

The FCA believes that access to fairly priced trade data is important for the whole financial system and allows for informed and timely investment decisions. Trading data includes information on prices and volumes traded and supplied by venues, such as stock exchanges, where shares and other financial products are bought and sold.

Markets in which firms compete to provide good quality wholesale data will make the UK an attractive place to do business for a wide range of financial service providers, the FCA’s report also suggested. The regulator’s work in this area is fundamental to its efforts to strengthen the UK’s position in global wholesale markets.

“Our work aims to make sure that competition is working well in wholesale data markets and market participants can access data they need,” commented executive director, consumers and competition at the FCA, Sheldon Mills.

“This is important to help foster the competition and innovation that will help boost the UK economy and secure better outcomes for investors.”

Alongside its findings on competition in the market for trade data, the FCA has also launched a market study amid concerns that competition in other types of wholesale data markets could be more effective.

This new wholesale data market study will investigate potential competition problems in the markets for benchmarks, credit ratings data and market data vendor services, and whether they could be resulting in higher costs for investors, less effective investment decisions and preventing new firms entering these markets.

“We will use the findings from our wholesale data work and findings from our market study to guide us in our efforts to achieve these aims,” Mills added.

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