The FCA has launched the UK’s first bond consolidated tape, giving investors and market participants a single, real-time source of post-trade prices and activity across the UK bond market.
The service, operated by ETS Connect UK, brings together bond trading data that was previously spread across multiple venues and providers. It launches with 98% coverage of in-scope bond trading and will be supervised by the FCA throughout a five-year contract covering data quality, completeness and timeliness.
The UK is the first country outside North America to introduce a consolidated tape for bonds. The launch follows changes to the UK’s bond market transparency rules that took effect in December 2025, significantly increasing the proportion of trades reported in real time.
Real-time reporting for corporate bond trades has risen from under 5% to over 75%, while the proportion for government bonds has increased from around 30% to approximately 80%. Some smaller parts of the market have recorded increases of more than 50-fold. The tape now places that information into a single service rather than requiring users to assemble data from separate sources.
Simon Walls, executive director of markets at the FCA, described the launch as an improvement to the quality and accessibility of UK bond trading information. The regulator expects the service to support the UK’s position as a leading centre for fixed-income issuance and trading while giving users a clearer view of market activity.
Improved post-trade data can influence pricing, execution assessment and liquidity analysis across the bond market. Investors will be able to compare completed transactions more easily, while asset managers and financial institutions can use a wider dataset to review execution quality and identify changes in trading conditions.
Finance directors and treasury teams issuing or refinancing debt also gain a more consistent reference point for analysing market pricing. A clearer record of completed trades can support discussions with banks, advisers and investors, particularly where a company is assessing the timing or expected cost of a bond issue. The service covers bonds admitted to trading on UK venues. Exchange-traded notes and exchange-traded commodities are excluded. ETS Connect UK was appointed following a two-stage competitive tender launched in March 2025.
Industry bodies involved in the development have supported the launch. UK Finance managing director David Raw said the tape should improve transparency, efficiency and liquidity across UK bond markets. International Capital Market Association chief executive Bryan Pascoe highlighted its potential to support execution assessment, analytics and wider market participation.
Victoria Webster, managing director for fixed income at the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, linked the service to better price discovery and more efficient trading. The Investment Association’s head of capital markets, Hugo Gordon, said wider access to data should improve the information available to bond investors when making investment decisions.
The FCA is also developing a consolidated tape for equities as part of its programme to improve market transparency, data quality and access. The bond launch follows nearly 50 measures announced in January 2025 to support UK market growth and competitiveness. The test now shifts to the consistency and usability of the information delivered by ETS Connect UK. High coverage provides a strong starting point, but market confidence will depend on reliable reporting, manageable costs and data that can be integrated into trading, treasury and risk systems without adding another layer of operational complexity.
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