The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB or Board) operates the Transaction Reporting Program to accomplish two major objectives: to provide price transparency in the municipal securities market and to provide an audit trail of transactions that can be used for market surveillance and enforcement of Board rules by regulatory bodies.
This manual is intended to aid municipal securities dealers in reporting their transactions to the Board. It should be useful to trading, sales, operations and compliance departments, as well as to service bureaus and other vendors supporting dealer operations.
The Transaction Reporting System, or TRS, operates at the MSRB's offices in the Washington, DC area. Two TRS subsystems store data about different types of trades: the Customer Transaction Reporting Subsystem (CTRS) processes customer trade input and the Dealer Transaction Reporting Subsystem (DTRS) processes inter-dealer trades input. The TRS includes a surveillance database storing details of all municipal securities transactions reported by dealers. The surveillance database and its audit trail capability is available to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the NASD, and other regulators charged with enforcement of MSRB rules. The TRS also produces and makes public through subscriptions a daily report summarizing certain price and volume information, which provides transparency to participants in the municipal securities market and to the public.
MSRB rule G-14 requires, among other things, that each dealer report its transactions in municipal securities to the MSRB. As noted in the rule, this User's Manual describes the format and procedures that must be used for reporting transactions in municipal securities between dealers and customers. The manual is intended to give you the information you need to fulfill the requirement to report customer transactions.
Inter-dealer transactions have been reported to the MSRB since 1995 through the automated comparison system operated by National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC). NSCC provides the inter-dealer trade data and certain associated reports to the Board each night. As noted, inter-dealer and customer transaction data are combined in the Transaction Reporting System to produce the surveillance database and daily public reports.
The advent of customer transaction reporting has not caused any changes to be made to the inter-dealer transaction reporting process, and, accordingly, this manual refers only sparingly to inter-dealer transaction reporting. Dealers must not put inter-dealer trade data in the same file as customer trade data. Dealers continue to send inter-dealer trade data to the MSRB through the automated comparison system, taking care to include the data elements required by the MSRB for each transaction record (broker symbols for the dealers that effected the trade, plus time of trade), as well as ensuring that trade records are input in a manner that produces a trade "comparison" on the night of trade date. (More information on the inter-dealer system can be found in Appendix B to this manual and in "Guidelines for Reporting Inter-Dealer Transactions under Rule G-14," MSRB Reports, Vol. 16, No. 2 (June 1996) at 9-12.)
MSRB posts notices and technical information about transaction reporting on its Web site, www.msrb.org. There you can find this manual and its appendixes, as well as revisions and updates as they are published. Each edition of MSRB Reports, in which most notices originally appeared, is also available through the site.
Much of the detailed information about using the TRS is contained in the following appendixes. Basic information for TRS users is contained in the Questions and Answers of Appendix B. We strongly recommend that you read the Questions and Answers in conjunction with this manual.
Appendix A
MSRB Rule G-14 and Transaction Reporting Procedures
Appendix B
MSRB Transaction Reporting Program: Questions and Answers (June 1998)
Appendix C
Transaction Reporting Information Form
Appendix D
Specifications for Reporting Customer Transactions to the MSRB (March
1997)
Appendix E
Changes to File Specifications (April 1997)
Appendix F
User's Manual for Reporting Customer Transactions Using the MSRB PC Transaction
Reporting System (PC TRS) (November 20, 1997 )
Appendix G
"Supplement to PC TRS User's Manual (February 2, 1998) and "PC-TRS
Troubleshooting Guide (July 27, 1998)
Appendix H
"NSCC Interface Requirements," NSCC Important Notice A4571/P&S4155
(April 2, 1997)
Appendix I
"MSRB Testing with NSCC Interface," NSCC Important Notice A4618/P&S4195
(July 9, 1997)
Appendix J
Error Messages ("Important Notice Regarding MSRB Transaction Reporting
System," April 17, 1998)
Appendix K
"Reminder of Appropriate Transaction Reporting Procedures for Transactions
Effected by Dealers Using Clearing Brokers" (January 9, 2001)