Work on introducing data-sharing standards between product manufacturers and distributors will kick-off today (22 November).
The Tax Incentivised Savings Association has said the steering committee which will create the standards for sharing data will begin its work today (22 November) to solve issues thrown up by incoming target market rules.
Speaking at the Tisa conference yesterday (21 November) Jeffrey Mushens, the organisation's technical policy director, said the issue would need to be addressed through industry-wide collaboration.
The target market rules come into effect in January as part of Mifid II and require distributors, including advisers, to pass information to providers to ensure investment products are being sold only to specifically targeted markets.
For each product, investment firms need to identify a potential target market and the type of client whose needs, characteristics and objectives it will meet.
If the product provider requires information on product sales to comply with the rules, distributors will have to offer it up.
But Mr Mushens said: "There needs to be a better solution with millions of data points being shared across hundreds of product manufacturers and thousands of distributors.
"There has to be a better way forward.
"We are looking at a solution based on an industry standard and governance standard about how data can be shared and updated."
He said the whole industry could be involved in this structure, not just asset managers and distributors.
The steering committee, which includes seven major providers, will start work on the initial phase today before work on designing the standards start in January.
The work is predicted to take four to five months.
Mr Mushens said the introduction of Mifid II had been a "monster" for the financial sector and warned the expansion of the senior managers and certification regime, expected next year, would be similar.
He said: "This is going to be pretty monstrous. 55,000 firms are now going to be affected some time from the end of 2018.
"The FCA is keen to make examples of senior managers so this will a big project next year."
Earlier this year the FCA published a consultation on plans to extend the senior managers regime to all regulated companies, including advisers.
Under the regime, which has applied to banks since 2016, anyone who holds a senior management function at an advice firm will need to be approved by the FCA and every senior manager will need to fill out a statement of responsibilities explaining what they are responsible for.
Mr Mushens added that Tisa is currently meeting HM Treasury and HM Revenue & Customs over the issue of fractional shares so savers could be invested "to the nearest penny".
Tisa is keen to see legislative changes on this issue, he added.
damian.fantato@ft.com
