TRAction has identified a few common mistakes in ASIC trade reporting data. Ensuring the completeness and accuracy of your ASIC trade reporting is important so please take the time to review the below.

1. Only OTC derivatives trades need to be reported

For the purpose of ASIC trade reporting, you are only required to report trades in relation to OTC derivatives such as margin FX, options, forwards and CFDs. Hence, it’s important you only submit OTC derivatives-related trade data to your reporting delegate or trade repository.

Check your files to ensure you are excluding all of the following transactions:

• direct stocks and equities;
• direct cryptocurrency transactions (e.g. bitcoin trades which are not CFDs over bitcoin); and
• Exchange traded derivatives.

2. Only trades related to you (Australian entity) matter

You are only required to submit trades entered into between your Australian entity and:

• your clients/counterparties; and
• your hedging counterparties (unless single sided relief exemption applies).

If you have related offshore or overseas entities, please ensure you are not sending any trades relating to those entities (unless there is a hedging arrangement from the offshore entity to your ASIC entity in place which requires reporting to ASIC) to your reporting delegate or trade repository.

3. Reporting all trading platforms and systems

ASIC have issued fines to AMP and Westpac for not reporting large quantities of OTC derivatives transactions because they have forgotten about entire systems containing the information.

Check you are reporting trades from all of your platforms and systems. For example, have you added MetaTrader5 or another platform and forgotten to update your reporting delegate or systems?

4. Full visibility of your reportable trade accounts (only applicable to clients using MT4 API, MT4 & MT5 linked servers)

Ensure all the reportable trading platform accounts are visible to your reporting delegate or the team doing your ASIC OTC derivative trade reporting, especially if you use a grouping method to organise your trade accounts.

5. Check your handback files

If you haven’t been checking the handback or confirmation files received from your reporting delegate or trade repository, see TRAction’s tips on how you can do the cross-check.

With these simple tips, you’ll improve your reporting process. If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, please do not hesitate to contact us. Additionally, you can read more on ASIC trade reporting for further information.

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