The UK's Financial Conduct Authority has levied a financial penalty on UBS, the Swiss banking group, in accordance with s206 Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

The regulator is aggrieved that it did not receive timely information relating to various transactions, such as information about buyers and sellers, from the world's largest private banking group. This transgression, according to its recent decision notice against UBS, occurred over the span of a decade.

SUP 17, part of the FCA's supervision 'manual' (actually a labyrinthine piece of text that forms part of the regulator's even more enormous rulebook) requires firms that conduct reportable transactions to send complete and accurate transaction reports to the regulator on a timely basis. The regulator accuses UBS of flouting SUP17 between 2007 and May 2017 by failing to  report 3.65 million transactions (thus breaking SUP 17.1.4R) and failing to accurately report 83 million executed transactions (SUP 17.4.1EU and SUP 17.4.2R), in some cases by using incorrect identifier codes for the counterparties to those transactions.

Between 2007 and 2014, UBS also allegedly breached Principle 3 of the FCA’s Principles for Businesses. This vague dictum requires firms to take reasonable care to organise and control their affairs responsibly and effectively, with adequate risk management systems. The FCA also accuses UBS in this period of failing to take  reasonable steps to prevent the erroneous reporting of transactions when those transactions either did not occur or occurred but were not reportable (in breach of SUP 15.6.1R). This affected approximately 49.1 million transactions.

The FCA says that UBS failed to respect Principle 3 because it failed to have systems and controls that were good enough to ensure that reference or ‘static’ data to be placed in various mandatory fields in the transaction reports were complete and accurate. It was also deficient in the "change management controls" that it used when making changes to its transaction reporting processes and systems and it did not test the  completeness and accuracy of its transaction reports very well.

Over the course of these two periods, UBS traded a wide variety of financial products and in increasing volumes.

The introduction of MiFID, the European Union's first Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, on 1 November 2007 introduced changes to the list of products about which UBS had to report transactions to the old Financial Services Authority, the FCA's disgraced predecessor.

To date, the FCA has fined 12 other firms for MiFID transaction reporting breaches: Merrill Lynch International (MLI), Deutsche Bank AG, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), James Sharp & Co, Plus500UK, City Index Limited, Société Générale, Commerzbank AG, Instinet Europe Limited, Getco Europe Limited, Credit Suisse and Barclays Capital Securities Limited and Barclays Bank Plc.

UBS must pay the financial penalty by 2 April.