What is CSA Transaction Reporting?

The initial transaction reporting requirements came into force in 2016, with the aim of increasing market transparency and enhancing the CSA’s ability to monitor systemic risk. It also sought to standardise reporting requirements across all Canadian provinces.

Under the CSA transaction reporting requirements all OTC derivatives, including those executed on swap execution facilities, must be reported to a registered Trade Repository.

CSA Rewrite

The original regime was phased in throughout 2016 and there had not been subject to significant changes since then. As such, and similar to other transaction reporting regimes, such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the CSA regime was due an update – this resulted in the CSA Rewrite (“the Rewrite”).

The final version of the Rewrite was published in July 2024, with a go-live date of 25 July 2025. The overarching aim of the Rewrite was to more closely align to IOSCO standards and therefore increase harmonisation with other global regimes, such as CFTC and EMIR. One of the ways this was done was via the adoption of the ISO 20022 XML format for reporting.

This was also done via the introduction of the Critical Data Elements, such as the Unique Transaction Identifier (UTI) and the Unique Product Identifier (UPI). An added but equally important benefit of the introduction of these requirements is the improvement in the quality of data received by the CSA.

The timeline for reporting was also shortened from T+2 to T+1, as was the case for the CFTC Rewrite.