A Request for Quote (RfQ) is a financial term for certain way to ask a bank for an offer of a given financial instrument from a bank, made available by so-called Approved Publication Arrangement (APA) by the stock markets itself or by Financial data vendors as required in Europe by Markets in Financial Instruments Directive 2004, MiFID II and in effect since January 2018. A RFQ contains at least the International Securities Identification Number, ISIN to uniquely identify the financial product, the type (buy/ sell), the amount, a currency, and the volume (

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in given currency).

Background

In the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, 2007-09 financial crisis there was an initiative to create more ''pre-trade transparency'', for which it is essential to know who is requesting which financial product. Article 1(2) of the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/583 of 14 July 2016 (which supplements Regulation (EU) No 600/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council on markets in financial instruments) defines: This essentially means, that everybody buying or selling Stock, stocks, Bond (finance), bonds, Foreign exchange market, foreign exchange, commodities or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) will (automatically) generate an RfQ before the trade is settled.

References

External links

The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive 2004, MiFID II and Approved Publication Arrangement, APA data is distributed e.g. by * https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/product/apa/ * https://www.mds.deutsche-boerse.com/mds-de/data-services/marktdaten-in-echtzeit/deutsche-boerse-mifid-ii-apa-service * https://www.refinitiv.com/en/mifid/solutions-and-services/apa-and-publication-services Further reading: * https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/15/mifid-2-all-you-need-to-know.html ― a concise summary on the topic, understandable for laymen. Finance {{finance-stub