UK Bond Consolidated Tape Goes Live with 98% Market Coverage

ETS Connect UK has launched the United Kingdom’s bond consolidated tape, giving investors and market participants a single, real-time feed of prices and post-trade activity across the UK bond market. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is supervising the operator under a five-year contract, with the service launching at 98% coverage of in-scope bond trading. The UK becomes the first country outside North America to offer this infrastructure.

The tape is the culmination of transparency rule changes that came into force in December 2025. Those rules shifted real-time reporting of corporate bond trades from under 5% to over 75%, and government bond real-time reporting from roughly 30% to approximately 80%. In some smaller market segments, real-time reporting increased more than fifty-fold. The consolidated tape aggregates all of that newly standardised data into one accessible service.

ETS Connect UK was selected through a competitive two-stage tender launched in March 2025, and a legal challenge to the contract award by Ediphy was discontinued in May 2026. The service covers post-trade transparency data for bonds admitted to trading on UK venues; exchange-traded notes and exchange-traded commodities are excluded. The FCA has indicated it is also working to deliver a consolidated tape for equities, having chosen to prioritise bonds following consultations with market participants.