IIROC announces upgraded market surveillance system

Canadian market oversight is set for a boost with the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) launching upgraded market surveillance technology.

IIROC announced on Thursday that it is rolling out an upgraded market surveillance system, using Nasdaq’s technology, known as SMARTS.

The industry self-regulatory organization (SRO) said the new system will beef up its ability to detect possible market abuse, such as insider trading and market manipulation.

“IIROC’s market surveillance team will be able to more quickly detect trading anomalies across multiple products and firms, and identify and respond to emerging trends in an efficient manner,” it said.

The new system will also enable IIROC to keep up with the growth in trading activity.

The SRO reported that it oversaw 489 million trades in fiscal 2019, and coordinated 1,634 trading halts and 46 cease trade orders. It said the new SMARTS system has the capacity to handle double the current message volumes.

Additionally, it could be expanded beyond the debt and equity markets to cover novel asset classes, such as crypto-assets.

“We are setting the stage for our future with a system designed to improve how we oversee securities trading on debt and equity markets, by opening the door to use artificial intelligence that is more analytical and predictive,” Victoria Pinnington, IIROC’s senior vice-president, market regulation, said in a statement.

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