The challenge

The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) is a piece of EU legislation that aims to increase transparency in financial trading, meaning that all trades need to be timestamped, in some cases to within 100 microseconds. The law applies to anyone trading in any products that are listed in the EU.

However, conventional timing systems used for trading, such as GPS, are prone to jamming and interference, causing trading irregularities.

The solution

UBS and TMX Atrium^® signed an agreement with us to secure NPLTime^®, our service providing a precise time signal directly traceable to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and independent of GPS. The service provides the end user with a distributed solution that is certified at their premises via TMX Atrium^® infrastructure.

We operate one of the world's most accurate atomic clocks, NPL-CsF2, which is accurate to one second every 158 million years. NPLTime^®  is an extension of our many decades of time dissemination expertise, giving industry direct access to reliable timing straight from the source.

The impact

NPLTime^® provides end users with a timing capability that underpins traceable time-stamping, latency monitoring and synchronisation. It provides a clear audit trail for both internal analysis and regulatory reporting.

The service also completely eliminates reliance on GPS and removes susceptibility to jamming, spoofing, urban canyon effects and space weather. The signal is the only means of ensuring confidence that trades comply with MiFID II without the need for further monitoring and calibration needs and costs.

NPL's Quantum research

NPL's Communications research

NPLTime® services