Technical Notice

Participant Data Management (PDM) System

November 09, 2021

FINRA member firms have an obligation to report over-the-counter secondary market transactions in eligible equity and fixed income securities to one or more of the following FINRA trade reporting facilities, TRACE, ORF and ADF. Member firms obtain access to these facilities by completing a FINRA Participation Agreement (FPA) and for members who report via the TRAQS web application by submitting the FINRA Order Form.

FINRA will be replacing the existing method of submitting the FPA and FINRA Order Form with the Participant Data Management (PDM) system. The PDM system will streamline the submission process for many Transparency Services legal agreements and forms including the FPA and FINRA Order Form and will allow users to perform the following functions for the TRACE, ORF and ADF facilities:

  • Submit, view, and amend the FINRA Participation Agreement;
  • View and modify access to the FINRA trade reporting facilities including TRACE, ORF and ADF;
  • View, add, modify, and delete various agreements including the Uniform Reporting Agreement (URA fka USA) and FINRA Transaction Fee Transfer Agreement which is also referred to as the Explicit Fee Agreement;
  • Manage MPIDs and communicate information regarding MPID changes to FINRA;
  • And manage TRAQS login ids.

Beginning December 1, 2021, member firms may test the new PDM system in the customer test environment with the same login credentials used to access the FINRA Participant Agreement or FINRA Order Form in production today. The test environment is available at https://participants.ct.finra.org.

Information about the new PDM system and access to training materials including the user guide and FAQ’s can be found by visiting our Participant Data Management page.

Please note: Users are encouraged to submit valid changes into the test environment as successful submissions will be transmitted to the NTF region of TRAQS. Changes to TRAQS login ids, client authorizations, clearing numbers, or the firm’s agreements will be reflected in the TRAQS NTF environment.

Please email FINRA Market Operations or call (866) 776-0800, option 2, if you have any questions regarding this notice.