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| 9 Jun 2026 | |
| Financial Data Transparency Hub |
June 9, 2026
The Financial Data Transparency Act of 2022 (FDTA) directed federal financial regulators to jointly establish data standards that would make financial regulatory reporting machine-readable and interoperable. In June 2026, the agencies published the final joint rule establishing those standards. The Data Foundation and its Data Coalition members advocated for the FDTA's enactment, and see the final rule as an important foundation for modernizing federal financial reporting — and as the first step in a longer implementation process where the operational stakes will be settled through subsequent agency-specific rulemakings.
The FDTA was enacted on December 23, 2022, as Title LVIII of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. It directs eight federal financial regulators, including — the SEC, FDIC, OCC, CFPB, FHFA, NCUA, the Federal Reserve, and (following Treasury designation in May 2024) the CFTC — along with the Department of the Treasury, to jointly establish data standards. The law's central mandate is to move financial reporting from static, document-based formats toward structured, standardized, open data formats. Congress passed the FDTA with strong bipartisan support, recognizing that fragmented financial regulatory data imposes unnecessary compliance costs on industry while limiting regulators' ability to detect risk, fraud, and emerging issues.
The final joint rule, published in June 2026 and effective October 1, 2026, establishes three things: (1) seven common identifiers for entities, financial instruments, dates, geographic locations, and currencies; (2) a principles-based standard specifying properties that data transmission and schema/taxonomy formats should have, to the extent practicable; and (3) a definition of "collections of information" drawn from the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.
The joint rule itself does not change any current reporting requirements. As the rule states explicitly: "At the effective date, the joint rule will not change any reporting requirements without further action by the agencies." The standards established in the joint rule will be incorporated into specific reporting requirements through subsequent agency-specific rulemakings.
The FDTA was signed into law on December 23, 2022. The Secretary of the Treasury designated the CFTC as a covered agency on May 3, 2024. The agencies issued a proposed joint rule on August 22, 2024, opening a public comment period during which the Data Foundation submitted detailed comments on October 17, 2024. The final joint rule was published in June 2026, with an effective date of October 1, 2026.
The Legal Entity Identifier is a 20-character alphanumeric code (ISO 17442) that uniquely identifies legal entities participating in financial transactions. The LEI was developed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when regulators discovered that aggregating exposure to failing counterparties was severely hampered by inconsistent entity identification across regulatory systems. The LEI is non-proprietary, available under an open license, and free of charge to any user. It is maintained globally by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) under the oversight of the Regulatory Oversight Committee, on which several U.S. financial regulators sit.
The joint rule establishes the LEI as the common standard for entity identification across covered agencies. The statute itself required a "common, nonproprietary legal entity identifier that is available under an open license" — criteria the LEI satisfies. The agencies concluded that the LEI best meets the FDTA's requirements among existing legal entity identifier options.
The joint rule established six additional common identifiers, each non-proprietary and available under an open license:
Rather than naming specific structured data formats (such as XBRL variants, JSON, or XML), the joint rule establishes a principles-based standard. Under this standard, data transmission and schema/taxonomy formats must, to the extent practicable: render data fully searchable and machine-readable; enable high-quality data through schemas with accompanying metadata documented in machine-readable taxonomy or ontology models that define semantic meaning; ensure that data elements satisfying regulatory information collection requirements are consistently identified in machine-readable metadata; and be non-proprietary or available under an open license. Any format meeting these properties is consistent with the standard. The specific formats to be required for any given reporting context will be determined through each agency's subsequent rulemaking.
Several elements proposed or considered were not adopted in the final rule:
The CFTC was not initially named as a covered agency in the FDTA but was designated as a covered agency by the Secretary of the Treasury on May 3, 2024, pursuant to authority granted by the statute. This brings the derivatives market under the FDTA framework and ensures the CFTC participates in the joint standards. The Data Foundation supported this designation.
Senior officials from across the covered agencies framed the final rule as a meaningful step forward and the beginning of a longer implementation process.
CFTC Chairman Selig identified the core problem the FDTA was designed to address:
"As market participants operate in an increasingly convergent financial ecosystem, they must navigate the regulatory requirements of multiple federal agencies that often require them to report similar or identical data using different data standards. These inconsistencies increase costs on firms without a commensurate benefit to regulators' use of the collected data. This final rule is an important step towards reducing these unnecessary burdens."
SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins emphasized the dual benefit of common standards for both industry and the investing public:
"The establishment of joint data standards across federal financial regulators will help ensure consistent data collection that will both ease burdens for financial institutions and make data more accessible to investors."
SEC Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda explicitly framed the joint rule as a foundational step requiring further agency action:
"This action is a first step towards implementing the Financial Data Transparency Act across federal financial regulatory agencies… which will be followed by separate rulemaking for agency-specific standards that will further improve the accessibility of financial data."
No. The final joint rule is a foundational step that establishes the data standards covered agencies will use, but the operational work happens through agency-specific rulemakings that have not yet been proposed. Each covered agency must now incorporate the joint standards into specific reporting requirements under its jurisdiction. The FDTA permits agencies to scale requirements to reduce burden on smaller regulated entities and to tailor standards where appropriate.
The agency-specific rulemakings are where the operational substance of the FDTA will be decided. They will address questions that the joint rule deferred, including:
The joint rule's §_.2(b) explicitly authorizes covered agencies to "adopt data standards not established in the final joint rule." This flexibility makes sustained engagement with each agency's rulemaking essential.
The FDTA contemplates agency-specific implementation following the joint rule. With the joint rule effective October 1, 2026, the implementation horizon extends over the following years. No agency-specific FDTA rulemaking has yet been proposed. The actual schedule will depend on each agency's regulatory priorities, capacity, and the pace of stakeholder engagement.
The Data Foundation supports the final rule because it establishes a credible foundation for cross-agency interoperability where none previously existed. The adoption of the LEI as the common entity identifier — a non-proprietary, open-licensed, globally maintained standard — is the most significant action. Prior to this rule, the U.S. financial regulatory system relied on a patchwork of proprietary and agency-specific identifiers, with the difficulties that fragmentation imposed on regulators evident as recently as the 2008 financial crisis. Establishing the LEI as the common standard creates the conditions for entity-level data to be linked across agencies, which is the precondition for cross-agency analysis of systemic risk and for the kind of harmonized reporting that reduces compliance burden on industry.
The rule also demonstrates that federal financial regulators can effectively collaborate on common data standards, itself an important precedent for the coordinated federal data governance the Data Foundation has long advocated.
The Data Foundation's support for the final rule is tempered by concerns about what was deferred and about the flexibility provisions in the joint rule:
The absence of a common financial instrument identifier leaves a meaningful gap in the FDTA's interoperability promise. Without one, transaction- and instrument-level reporting will continue to rely on the patchwork of identifiers the statute was designed to address.
The absence of a joint taxonomy standard means that semantic interoperability (the ability to compare data across agencies based on its meaning, not just its format) will depend entirely on how each agency approaches taxonomy in its own rulemaking. This raises the risk of taxonomy fragmentation across covered agencies.
The principles-based approach to data transmission formats, without specifying particular structured data formats, leaves open the possibility of agency-specific format choices that limit data comparability and reusability across the regulatory system.
The expanded tailoring language in §_.2(b) — explicitly permitting agencies to adopt data standards not established in the final joint rule — increases the risk that agency-specific rules will diverge from the joint standards in ways that undermine the FDTA's interoperability mandate.
Standard Business Reporting is the broader framework that the FDTA exemplifies: businesses should be able to report once using standardized, machine-readable formats that satisfy multiple regulatory requirements, rather than filing similar information in different formats for each regulator. As the Data Foundation's 2026 Advocacy and Policy Agenda notes: "The financial services sector provides a concrete proof point for government-wide Standard Business Reporting adoption, showing how burden reduction and improved oversight work together rather than compete."
Whether the FDTA actually becomes that proof point depends less on the joint rule than on how the agency-specific rulemakings are conducted. If those rulemakings produce harmonized, machine-readable, semantically rich reporting, the FDTA becomes evidence that SBR principles can be extended to broader federal data infrastructure. If they produce fragmented, agency-specific implementations that nominally adopt the joint standards but diverge in operational detail, the FDTA's potential as a model will be substantially diminished.
AI applications whether used by regulators for risk detection, by researchers for systemic analysis, or by industry for compliance automation require data that is structured, consistently labeled, and machine-readable. Document-based regulatory filings are not directly usable as AI inputs without expensive pre-processing.
The joint rule establishes the standards that, if fully implemented through agency-specific rulemakings, will produce machine-readable financial regulatory data suitable for AI applications. The Data Foundation's 2026-2028 Strategic Plan frames the broader principle: "America's AI leadership depends on access to high-quality, well-documented datasets for training and evaluation." The FDTA's contribution to AI-ready federal data infrastructure depends on whether implementing rulemakings deliver structured, semantically rich data, not merely the procedural adoption of joint standards.
The Data Foundation's near-term FDTA work focuses on two priorities:
About the Data Foundation
The Data Foundation is a Washington, DC-based, non-profit, non-partisan organization. It is a trusted authority on the use of open, accessible data to fuel a more efficient, effective, and accountable government; spark innovation; and provide insights to the country's most pressing challenges. It conducts research, facilitates collaborative thought leadership, and promotes advocacy programs that advance practical policies for the creation and use of accessible, trustworthy data and evidence. The Data Foundation is recognized by Candid Guidestar with the Platinum Seal of Transparency and by Charity Navigator as a 4-Star non-profit. To learn more, visit www.datafoundation.org. (LEI: 254900I43CTC59RFW495)
