IIROC steps up market surveillance

The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) is bolstering its market monitoring capability by introducing a single-window surveillance system for all equity markets in Canada.

The Surveillance Technology Enhancement Platform (STEP) gives IIROC the ability to conduct cross-market surveillance and can currently process up to 400 million trades, orders, quotes and cancellation messages per day and is scalable to meet the anticipated growth.

STEP is directly managed and maintained by IIROC and is based on a customized version of the SMARTS Integrity Platform which has been adapted and implemented by more than 40 exchanges and regulators worldwide.

In tandem, IIROC will continue to use the surveillance system licensed from TSX Inc. to generate single-market alerts for Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange. All single-market alerts for the other regulated marketplaces in Canada are now handled by the STEP platform.

“In fulfilling our market surveillance responsibilities in a multi-market environment, we face the challenges of higher volumes, faster trading, new trading strategies and order types and more complex technologies,” said Susan Wolburgh Jenah, IIROC’s president and CEO. “The new STEP system consolidates regulatory feeds from all marketplaces, providing a centralized view of trading activity on the three exchanges and six Alternative Trading Systems currently operating in Canada.”

(09/29/10)