MiFID II laws to force traders for passport number

Bloomberg

A potentially explosive battle is brewing over a seldom-discussed aspect of the looming MiFID II laws, which will force traders of any European asset class to hand over personal identification such as passport numbers to every venue they trade on.
The massive data-collection exercise will drag in tens of thousands of investors and traders, who some trading venues say may simply refuse. A client mutiny would leave platform operators stuck between cutting off their customers or breaching the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive rules when they kick in on January 3.
“The whole issue around personal data has been underestimated,” said Enrico Bruni, managing director, head of Europe and Asia at Tradeweb LLC. “There are three problems: There’s an administrative problem for having to manage this data, there’s a philosophical problem about whether it’s right to collect this data. And, potentially, a legal problem.”
The hunt for data starts on October 27, when Cboe Global Markets Inc.’s European exchange becomes the first major market to switch on its MiFID-ready platform. London Stock Exchange Group Plc and others will follow in November, hoping to gather the data in less than two months. That will prove impossible for citizens of countries with strict privacy laws. In Switzerland, for example, it’s illegal to supply passport numbers to a commercial organisation.