FCA starts an 18-month clock on the UK equity tape before the tender exists

Eighteen months is the only hard number in this package, and some of it has already gone. The report carrying it is dated August 2026 ^[13], and the FCA says the work puts it on a path to deliver an equity consolidated tape inside that window ^[1], which places delivery around February 2028 ^[14]. Feedback on CP26/30 and CP26/31 is not due until 16 October 2026 ^[8], and procurement for the provider begins only once the FCA has considered it ^[9]. That leaves roughly sixteen months for a tender, an award, a build and a live launch ^[15]. Simon Walls, the FCA's executive director of markets, says the package settles the big design questions ^[3]. The schedule works only if that holds.

For anyone buying data, scope is the expensive decision. The tape carries both pre- and post-trade data, which the Investment Association's Hugo Gordon singled out as the point of the design ^[4], and which UK Finance's David Raw welcomed on the same grounds ^[5]. Post-trade consolidation reprices a reporting cost. Pre-trade consolidation reprices the quote feeds venues sell, because the FCA's own diagnosis is that assembling a complete picture of trading activity is complicated and expensive, and so market-wide data goes under-used ^[11]. Any multi-year vendor renewal signed between now and 2028 is a bet on how much of that assembly cost survives.

The quieter half of the package is harder to price. The FCA's assessment is that UK equity markets are functioning effectively, yet the same consultation asks which indicators it should track and which tools should be available if proportionate intervention is needed later ^[12]. AFME's Adam Farkas called the approach proportionate and evidence-based ^[6]. Raw's welcome came attached to the condition that future reform build on existing strengths ^[5]. The indicator list is where that disagreement will actually be settled, inside a document most desks will read only as a data-cost story.

The interim reporter is the change that lands first. It publishes overall UK equity market activity each day, ahead of the full tape ^[10], which hands every desk and every venue the same public denominator for volume and makes market-share arithmetic checkable by outsiders. The bond tape is the demand evidence behind all of this: more than 1.6 million licence subscriptions since its June 2026 launch ^[2]. Subscriptions are not firms, and the number says nothing about how many licences sit dormant inside large institutions, but it is the only take-up figure on the table when the equity tender opens.