Legislators Urge Implementation of the Financial Data Transparency Act

The Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry, Ranking Member Maxine Waters, U.S. Senator Mike Crapo and U.S. Senator Mark Warner urged federal financial regulators to finalize rulemakings implementing the Financial Data Transparency Act ("FDTA"). The legislators also urged the regulators to finalize their rulemakings in the timeline set forth by the Act.

In their letter to federal financial regulators, the lawmakers highlighted some of the goals of the FDTA, including:

• alleviating regulatory reporting burdens, including improving the accessibility, uniformity and usefulness of federal financial data for the public;
• adopting open-source data standards and common identifiers;
• implementing features like machine readability, search capability and interoperability across financial regulators;
• harmonizing regulatory reporting;
• improving the collection and dissemination of federal financial data; and
• spurring innovation and facilitating the responsible use of technology to fully utilize the publicly available data agencies publish.

In the letter, the legislators argued that "private sector market participants, academics, and individuals using advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are already able to analyze government documents and generate insights without the need for manual data entry. Publishing machine-readable data in a consistent format will facilitate the use of these technologies, leading to increased transparency and greater market efficiencies."