Senate Oversight Hearing: The Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT)

• •The Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) was proposed by the SEC in 2010 following the 'flash crash' to track securities orders from origination to execution.
• •The SEC initially estimated the CAT would cost $4 billion to launch and $2.1 billion in annual maintenance.
• •The system is designed to track the full life cycle of a securities order, including routing, cancellation, modification, and execution.
• •The project has faced multiple challenges and delays over its nine-year development period.
• •The current version of the CAT aims to prioritize data accuracy over real-time reporting to reduce costs.
• •FINRA CAT LLC, a subsidiary of FINRA, was selected as the plan processor for the system.
• •Congressional concerns focus on the total cost of the build, the volume of data collected, data access protocols, and the security of personally identifiable information (PII).

The CAT is a massive database tracking every stock market order in the U.S. to prevent market manipulation, and this hearing addresses ongoing concerns regarding its multi-billion dollar cost, data security, and the protection of personally identifiable information (PII).

Patterns POLISCOPE noticed across the record. These are observations to investigate, not conclusions.