MiFID II RTS 28 Best-Execution Reports — Abolished in 2024: What They Were and What Replaced Them

**Update (2026):** This article originally covered the RTS 28 report as a live, mandatory disclosure. The 2024 MiFID II review abolished the obligation, so the piece has been rewritten to explain what RTS 28 was, why it was scrapped, and what to read instead. The conceptual guidance on venue concentration, passive/aggressive splits and routing narratives still applies — to historical RTS 28 filings and to the order execution policies that replaced them.

For years, buried in the legal section of every MiFID II-regulated broker's website, there was a document called the RTS 28 report. It was, for a while, the single most useful piece of execution-quality disclosure produced by retail forex brokers in the EU — and it was read by approximately nobody. That, in the end, is why it no longer exists.

The headline: RTS 28 was abolished in the 2024 MiFID II review

The obligation to publish RTS 28 reports was deleted. Article 27(6) of MiFID II — the provision that required investment firms to publish their annual top-five execution venue reports — was removed by the MiFID II review directive (Directive (EU) 2024/790), published in the Official Journal on 8 March 2024 and in force from 29 March 2024. The sibling RTS 27 venue-level report had already been suspended in 2021 and was deleted by the same review.

The stated reason, set out in the recitals to the directive, is blunt: the reports were hardly read and did not enable meaningful comparisons. A sample of firms found fewer than ten downloads per month of the RTS 27/28 data. The regime imposed a real preparation cost on firms and delivered almost no value to the retail and wholesale audiences it was meant to serve.

Ahead of national transposition, ESMA issued a public statement on 13 February 2024 telling national regulators (CySEC, BaFin, the AMF and the rest) to deprioritise any supervisory action against firms that stopped publishing RTS 28 reports. Member States were given 18 months to transpose the directive, so a handful of firms published a final report during 2024, but by 2025 the disclosure had effectively disappeared across the EU. If you go looking for a broker's "2025 RTS 28 report" today, you will not find one — there is no longer an obligation to produce it.

What RTS 28 was

Regulatory Technical Standard 28, made under Article 27 of MiFID II and in force from 2018 to its abolition in 2024, required every authorised investment firm executing orders on behalf of clients to publish, once a year, the top five execution venues it used during the previous calendar year, broken down by client class and instrument type. Each disclosure had to include:

- The top five execution venues by traded volume for each MiFID II instrument class (FX CFDs, equity CFDs, commodity CFDs, etc.) - The percentage of orders executed at each venue - The percentage of orders that were passive (rest on book) versus aggressive (cross the spread) - The percentage that were directed orders (client specified the venue) - A summary explanation of the firm's order-routing logic and how it achieved best execution under the relevant factors (price, cost, speed, likelihood of execution and settlement)

The deadline was 30 April for the prior calendar year, and failure to publish was an enforceable breach. That is the regime that has now been withdrawn.

Why almost nobody read it — and why that mattered

Three reasons the report went unread, which are also the reasons regulators ultimately scrapped it:

**It was buried.** Brokers filed RTS 28 under "Legal Documents" or "Best Execution Policy" in the footer, alongside PDFs nobody opens. The retail-facing surface of the website never referenced the disclosure directly.

**It was dense.** A typical RTS 28 PDF ran 6-25 pages of tables, footnotes and regulatory language, written for a regulator audience rather than a retail trader.

**Nobody had told retail clients what to look for.** Education sites covered the standard MiFID II protections — segregated funds, negative balance protection, ICF compensation — but rarely mentioned RTS 28. The most data-rich document a broker was forced to publish was the one no client ever opened.

What a venue disclosure tells you — still useful for reading historical filings and order execution policies

The analytical framework below was written for RTS 28 reports. It remains useful for two reasons: historical RTS 28 filings (2018-2024) are still informative about how a broker operated, and the same signals appear in the order execution policies that firms are still required to publish. Three signals worth extracting:

1. Concentration of execution venues

A broker that routes 95% of EUR/USD orders to a single venue is operating a tightly-controlled (often single-LP) execution model. This can be efficient or it can be a sign that the broker has commercial reasons to favour one venue. A broker that distributes orders across 5+ venues with weights of 15-30% each is operating a multi-LP aggregation model where competition between LPs tightens spreads.

Neither is intrinsically better, but they signal different broker types. A multi-LP aggregator is typically running an ECN/STP model. A single-venue router is more often running an internalised market-making model — fills against its own book.

2. Passive vs aggressive order split

A venue disclosure breaks executions into "passive" (orders that sat on the order book waiting for a counterparty) and "aggressive" (orders that crossed the spread to execute immediately). For a retail broker, almost all client orders are aggressive — clients want immediate fills. A retail-focused broker showing 95-100% aggressive execution is being honest.

A broker showing significant passive execution on retail accounts is doing something unusual — either it is running limit-order strategies on behalf of internalised accounts, or its definition of "aggressive" is loose. Worth probing.

3. The routing narrative

RTS 28 reports included a summary section explaining the firm's order-routing logic, and a good order execution policy still does. This is the part worth reading carefully. A strong narrative will explain:

- How the broker selects its LP panel and how often the panel is reviewed - How the broker monitors execution quality (latency, fill ratio, slippage statistics) - How the broker treats large orders that cannot be filled at a single price - How the broker handles partial fills on illiquid instruments - How the broker resolves conflicts between price improvement and execution speed for different client types

A weak narrative will use standard MiFID II language without specifics — "we monitor execution quality on a continuous basis using industry-standard metrics" — and tell you nothing about how the broker actually operates.

What replaced RTS 28: the order execution policy

The best-execution *duty* was not abolished. Article 27(1) of MiFID II still requires every firm to take all sufficient steps to obtain the best possible result for its clients, considering price, cost, speed, likelihood of execution and settlement, size and nature of the order. What changed is that firms no longer publish the standardised annual venue report; instead the surviving disclosure is the **order execution policy** — the document describing how the firm achieves best execution.

ESMA has been strengthening exactly this document. As part of the review, it consulted in 2025 and published a final report with draft regulatory technical standards specifying the criteria firms must use to establish and assess the effectiveness of their order execution policies. The direction of travel is away from a backward-looking data dump nobody read and towards a clearer, forward-looking statement of how the firm routes orders — which is arguably the more useful document for a retail client.

A good order execution policy typically covers:

- The execution factors the broker considers and the relative importance it assigns to each for each instrument class and client type - The execution venues and liquidity providers the broker uses and the criteria for selecting them - The arrangements in place to monitor and review execution quality - How the broker handles specific client instructions (when the client specifies a venue or rejects the default routing)

Read against the three signals above — concentration, passive/aggressive handling, and the specificity of the routing narrative — the order execution policy now does most of the job RTS 28 used to do.

The brokers we cover

Several of the EU-regulated brokers we cover historically published solid RTS 28 disclosures and carried that transparency across into their order execution policies:

**[Pepperstone](/brokers/pepperstone)** (Cyprus entity, CySEC 388/20) historically published one of the more detailed venue disclosures in the sector, with named liquidity providers and a substantive routing narrative, and maintains a public order execution policy.

**[IC Markets](/brokers/ic-markets)** (CySEC 362/18) has published a clear best-execution policy with venue concentration and a passive/aggressive split, alongside separately accessible execution statistics.

**[Tickmill](/brokers/tickmill)** has published a readable CySEC disclosure with named LPs and an explicit treatment of symmetric vs asymmetric slippage in its execution policy.

The common feature is that these firms wrote their disclosures as if a retail client might actually read them — specific narratives, named venues, real breakdowns — rather than solely for a regulator. That habit of transparency is what to look for now that the mandatory report has gone.

How to assess execution quality now — a practical process

1. **Find the broker's "Best Execution Policy" or "Legal Documents" page.** The order execution policy lives there. If you cannot find it within 90 seconds of landing on the broker's homepage, that itself is a signal. 2. **Look for named venues and liquidity providers.** A policy that names its LP panel and describes how it is reviewed is more credible than one that refers only to "selected third-party venues". 3. **Read the routing narrative in full.** If it is two paragraphs of MiFID II boilerplate, the broker is not communicating. If it runs to several pages describing specific monitoring and review processes, the broker is taking the disclosure seriously. 4. **Check for voluntary execution statistics.** Some brokers (FxPro is one) continue to publish slippage and fill-rate data voluntarily even though the mandatory report is gone. Voluntary disclosure after the obligation was removed is a strong positive signal.

What we use in our methodology

Our [methodology](/methodology) scores execution quality partly on the quality of a broker's published execution disclosure. With the standardised RTS 28 report abolished, we now weight the order execution policy and any voluntary execution statistics. A broker scoring at the top of the execution component will have:

- A current order execution policy accessible from the homepage in fewer than 3 clicks - Named execution venues or liquidity providers with a clear selection and review process - A routing narrative that matches the broker's stated business model - Voluntary slippage or fill-rate statistics, ideally on the same legal-documents surface

A broker that meets all four gets a strong execution score. A broker that meets two of four gets a mid-tier score. A broker that publishes only boilerplate gets flagged for additional verification before we list it in our editorial rankings.

What a venue disclosure can never do for you

Three honest limits that applied to RTS 28 and apply equally to an order execution policy:

**It is not a guarantee about your orders.** The disclosure aggregates across all clients. Your individual execution experience may diverge if you trade at unusual sizes, in illiquid pairs, or during volatile sessions.

**It is self-reported.** The firm is liable for false statements, and the regulator can pull its records, but there is no independent audit of the figures. The disclosure is a credible signal, not third-party verification.

**It does not change your strategy's odds.** A broker with a strong execution disclosure is more likely to give you fair fills, but it does not change the underlying probability that a leveraged CFD strategy is profitable.

For wider context on EU regulation of retail forex brokers see our [what CySEC is](/questions/what-is-cysec) and [what BaFin is](/questions/what-is-bafin) explainers.

Risk warning

Trading CFDs and leveraged forex carries a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. A high percentage of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. A broker with a strong execution disclosure is more likely to give you fair execution but does not change the underlying probability that your strategy is profitable.

*This article was updated in 2026 to reflect the abolition of the RTS 28 reporting obligation in the 2024 MiFID II review (Directive (EU) 2024/790, in force 29 March 2024) and ESMA's 13 February 2024 statement deprioritising supervision of the report. The best-execution duty under Article 27(1) MiFID II remains in force, disclosed through the order execution policy.*