Joint Industry Plan; Order Approving an Amendment to the National Market System Plan Governing the Consolidated Audit Trail; Notice

As previously announced (EventID 22937), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, has now published in the Federal Register its final approval of an amendment to the National Market System (NMS) Plan for the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), introducing a new funding model called the „Executed Share Model“ to recover the costs for maintaining the CAT system.
This model establishes a schedule for CAT fees for self-regulatory organizations (SROs) participating in the CAT NMS Plan. The new model provides that fees of participants and industry members are „based on executed equivalent share volume“ which is calculated „based on whether securities being traded are NMS Stocks, Listed Options, and/or OTC Equity Securities, to account for differences in the trading characteristics of each of those securities“. Details on the calculation are outlined in the approval.
The fees will subsequently have to be paid by trading venues and FINRA and will be passed on members of these SROs, particularly broker-dealers, following a corresponding filing with the SEC and approval by the regulator.