If you’ve ever had two managers give you contradictory instructions on the same project, you understand the derivatives industry’s reporting problem. The SEC and CFTC, America’s two main financial regulators, each oversee a slice of the swaps market with their own distinct reporting rules. Now they’re formally asking the public how to fix that.
The two agencies are soliciting comments as part of a broader push to align data reporting requirements across security-based swaps (SEC territory) and swaps (CFTC territory). The goal is simple in theory, if historically elusive in practice: make firms report the same types of trades in roughly the same way, regardless of which regulator has jurisdiction.
A joint initiative months in the making
This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. The SEC and CFTC signed an updated Memorandum of Understanding on March 11, 2026, establishing what they’re calling a Joint Harmonization Initiative. That MOU laid the groundwork for everything happening now.
The timeline since then has moved at a pace that counts as brisk by regulatory standards. On April 13, ICE Trade Vault submitted comments advocating for the permanent codification of aligned reporting rules, arguing it would reduce operational burdens on market participants. By May, CFTC officials were signaling that joint requests for comment on data reporting harmonization would follow.
