In December 2018, the European Commission has confirmed its intention to “explore ways in which harmonised data definitions (a ‘common financial data language’) could be used to optimise supervisory reporting without compromising the objectives of the relevant legislation.” Follow up to the Call for Evidence – EU regulatory framework for financial services (EC, Dec 17)

It hopes to create a common language across regulations which will address the issue of unclear definitions, which is emerging as one of the main causes of the reporting burden.” Follow up to the Call for Evidence – EU regulatory framework for financial services (EC, Dec 17)

The intention is for the project to “abolish legacy data and legacy IT systems by switching to a new system based on robust common data standard” FISMA: Financial Data Standardisations (EC, 16). It will have the added benefit of “allowing third party providers to design solutions (including APIs) based on a transparent (open source) standard” while additionally “The interoperability will also create new opportunities to aggregate the immense amount of information available (big data).” FISMA: Financial Data Standardisations (EC, 16)

It is believed a common financial language would resolve issues caused by
⦁ different formats reflecting different mandates of national and European financial supervisory structures
⦁ interoperability of different IT reporting systems, at national and European level
⦁ difficulty in aggregating the data
⦁ difficulty in receiving real-time data
⦁ difficulty following the life-cycle of a financial instrument