Foreword

From Galina Dimitrova

Foreword

As we stand at the midpoint of 2024, I am pleased to share our latest Investment and Capital Markets quarterly policy report. This report brings together and highlights the key areas of focus for the IA’s investment and capital markets policy team over the past few months.

On the capital markets side, the report outlines a number of IA dialogues on the development of UK consolidated tape for all asset classes - a key policy priority for us. We also remained firmly focused on engaging with the FCA’s Wholesale Data Market Study as we continue to advocate for solutions to our members’ long-held concerns regarding the rapidly increasing cost and complexity of wholesale data markets.

Of course, Sustainability and Responsible Investment remain at the forefront of the IA’s policy agenda.

Our work in this area is completely dominated by the implementation of the new UK Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (“SDR”) and investment labels rules and we are working fast to support members with all outstanding issues on the road to implementation and compliance with the new regime.

Finally, on the investment operations side, we are pleased to report that that the transition to T+1 settlement in the US on the 28th May went well, not least because of the significant efforts of the IA and our member firms to prepare for it. Attention now turns to the UK/EU transitions and the IA is engaging with members to surface the collective industry position on the most suitable timeline and outstanding challenges to overcome.

Further details on all our policy work are covered in the following sections. We hope that members continue to find this policy report beneficial and resourceful.

Galina Dimitrova
Director, Investment and Capital Markets

The Investment and Capital Markets hub page can be found here.