Finra selects Amazon Web Services to power CAT processing
The consolidated audit trail (CAT) subsidiary of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its cloud provider for market surveillance data.
The CAT is a central repository commissioned by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to help regulators track activity in US securities markets.
Finra CAT covers 1,500
Finra’s CAT processes the order information for all public US equities and listed options. It will be using Amazon Aurora for its primary database needs, Amazon Redshift for data warehousing, and the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
“We are responsible for providing regulators with a consolidated view of the markets, so security, scalability, and resiliency are at the forefront of the design for the CAT platform,” says Scott Donaldson, chief technology officer at Finra CAT.
“Finra has deep and tested experience in creating such an environment on AWS, and in view of that track record, Finra CAT is pleased to select AWS for this major project.”
Related: Finra slaps UBS with $2m fine for short position failures
According to AWS vice president for worldwide public sector, Teresa Carlton, the CAT will provide “a single comprehensive view of US equities and listed options markets, as well as new tools to reconstruct market activity and maintain fair and orderly trading systems”.
She adds: “We are collaborating to ensure that Finra CAT can deliver an industry leading platform that provides accessibility and transparency of capital markets data to protect investors and the integrity of the financial market.”
In the Q2 2019 Amazon, via AWS, held around 33% of the cloud infrastructure services market. The company has maintained that third share in the market consistently since 2017, with next-closest competitor Microsoft occupying between 16% and 23% of the market over the same time period.
AWS has an operating income of around $7 billion and a revenue of $25 billion. It experienced a 35% growth in revenue in Q3 2019.
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