EMIR REFIT

EMIR (European Market Infrastructure Regulation) was established in 2012 in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Its purpose was to mitigate risks and issues in the OTC derivatives market.

In 2019, EMIR underwent its first major revision, known as EMIR REFIT 1, based on feedback from within the European Union and in alignment with MiFIR reporting obligations.

Further updates came in 2022 with EMIR REFIT 2, which introduced significant changes to the data structure and reporting requirements for EMIR. This revision incorporated global feedback and, for the first time, imposed new requirements. EMIR REFIT was implemented across the EU on 29th April 2024 and the UK on 30th September 2024.

The revision mandates several critical adjustments that organisations must adhere to or face severe penalties and damage to their reputation.

These changes include: 

• An Increase in Reporting Fields: The number of reporting fields will expand from 129 to 203 (204 in the UK), marking a 57% increase.

• UK Specific Field: The FCA has introduced an optional reporting field, Execution Agent - this only applies to the UK version of EMIR REFIT.

• ISO XML 20022 Standardisation: The adoption of the ISO 20022 standard will facilitate global reporting harmonisation.

• Unique Product Identifier (UPI): ESMA is introducing UPIs, with the Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB) serving as the provider.

• Differing Launch Times: The EU has implemented EMIR REFIT on 29th April, 2024 whereas the UK rollout has been slightly staggered and went live on 30th September, 2024.

• Reporting Under Both UK and EU EMIR: If reporting under both UK & EU EMIR there is 5-month period where organisations will have to report under the new reporting rules in the EU and the current ones in the UK.

For any regulatory reporting update or rewrite, some changes are somewhat straightforward to tackle while others can be less obvious.

Useful information such as guidelines and technical standards are readily available from ESMA while the FCA has yet to publish guidelines (at the time of writing), it has published technical standards.

Other challenges can lie in the project management phase(s) however. Updates that significant in scale should be treated as a high priority and prepared for as soon as possible.

We've covered a lot of what's needed for navigating the various challenges of EMIR REFIT in our webinar series, accessible here. Within the series, we answer a lot of questions directly from organisations, which may also help you.

To help organisations and individuals better understand what's changing with EMIR REFIT, we've produced the below resources to download at no cost.

Insight paper #1 - EMIR REFIT: What's changed? A summary of differential analysis between EMIR and EMIR REFIT (EU)

Insight paper #2 - EMIR Reporting: UK VS EU REFIT - A summary of the differences between the UK and EU reporting obligations

Webinars - Watch or revisit our collection of webinars on EMIR REFIT

Over the years, we've helped a huge number of diverse organisations sort their reporting.