Industry Segments Get More Time For CICI Adoption

Even with an extension of deadlines, swaps dealers still have a lot of work to do on preparedness for the CFTC Interim Compliant Identifiers (CICI) standard. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) already pushed an October 12 deadline for swap dealers and major swaps market participants to December 31, and recently also moved its January 10 start date for foreign exchange, commodities and equities trade adoption of CICIs to February 25.

The postponement of the second phase of CICI adoption is being attributed to delays caused by Hurricane Sandy, particularly in testing of the identifier, according to Karel Engelen, director and global head of technology solutions at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. All others are required to begin CICI reporting on April 1, which has remained unchanged.

The accuracy of CICIs already in place is an issue, according to Bill Hodash, managing director at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). Since DTCC began its database of CICIs in August, it has received 634 public challenges to its registrations, and 50% of the challenged registrations have proved to be inaccurate. DTCC has now registered about 40,000 CICIs, and data vendors, financial institutions and others have downloaded its CICI database 11,785 times since it started, according to Hodash.

"We got through any technical hurdles with the schema itself, the record layouts and the ability of data vendors and others to run this through their systems and get it out to their clients," he says, noting that there have not been any issues with downloading the database since its inception.

One outstanding issue concerning CICIs that still needs resolution is accuracy of addresses of registrants, according to Cynthia Meyn, executive vice president of operations at Pimco, the California-based fixed-income investment firm. Numerous major companies and pension funds from a range of industries may tend to use financial services firms' offices in a single US city, and their administration offices are being listed within the identifiers as being these financial firms' locations rather than their actual corporate headquarters.