OATS Announcements

Order Audit Trail System (OATS) Educational Telephone Conference 
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 4:15 PM ET

 

The newly updated OATS Web Interface will be available to firms in the OATS Test Environment on Monday, November 2, 2009. It will be put into the OATS Production Environment on Monday, December 14, 2009.

 

FINRA will host an educational telephone conference and WebEx demonstration of the new Web Interface on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 4:15 p.m., ET. Topics to be discussed include:

 

  • New OATS Web Interface Demonstration
  • Question and answer session

 

The details of the call are below:

 

Time: 4:15 p.m., ET
Call-In Number: (800) 779-1743 

Leader's Name: Paul McKenney 

Password: OATS

 

Please note that this call is closed to all members of the media. You must pre-register in order to participate in this conference call.

 

To register for the telephone portion of this conference:

 

  • Go to our MyMeetings Web page and input the required information.
  • Enter the conference number and passcode.
    • Conference Number: 9937405
    • Passcode: 3740126
  • Provide your information for the event leader and then click submit.

 

To ensure that you are not held up in the conference call queue as a result of the high call volume, please call in at least five minutes early.

 

To access the WebEx presentation on the day of the call, please follow the instructions below:

 

 

NOTE: When accessing the WebEx application, please follow the download instructions if prompted.

 

Please contact the OATS Helpdesk at (800) 321-6273 should you have any questions or concerns regarding OATS.

 

 

Preliminary Version of OATS Compliance Report Card — Available for June 2009 Report

Beginning with the June 2009 report period, FINRA will issue a preliminary version of the OATS Compliance Report Card in an effort to provide firms with more timely information regarding their overall OATS compliance performance.

 

View additional details.

 

 

OATS Email Retirement
Effective August, 31 2009, FINRA will retire email as an OATS transmission method and transition current email users to Internet File Transfer (“IFT”). As such, Order Sending Organizations will no longer be able to transmit data to OATS via email as of August 31, 2009. OATS will reject any files submitted via email as of that date. FINRA will be contacting each OSO currently submitting files via email to assist them with the transition process.

 

IFT is an efficient and cost-effective method to directly upload a prepared OATS file to FINRA via the Internet. Once the file is uploaded, the user is immediately able to confirm successful file transmission and receipt. IFT requires no file encryption or annual certificate renewal, thus reducing firm maintenance and compliance risk.

 

IFT may be accessed by a free web-based application or by purchasing a SecureTransport software package. Firms that submit less than 100,000 order events per day may use the free Web browser version. Firms that submit more than 100,000 order events per day must use the client version, which requires the purchase of the software package.

Effective June 1, 2009, firms may begin transitioning from email to IFT. The chart below provides more details on important dates. Please note that OATS will no longer accept files via email effective August 31, 2009.

 

Effective Date Impact
June 1, 2009 – June 30, 2009 The OATS Technical Helpdesk will contact all OSOs submitting via email to provide an IFT user id and password. In addition, the Helpdesk will provide assistance with IFT functionality and submission of test files.
June 16, 2009 FINRA will provide a WebEx overview of data transmission via the free web-based IFT application
August 31, 2009 OATS will no longer accept OATS data via email.

 

Please contact the OATS Helpdesk at 1-800-321-6273 with any questions related to this notice or to start the transition to IFT.


 

View previous OATS Announcements.