Self-Regulatory Organizations; Investors Exchange LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of Proposed Rule Change To Modify the IEX Fee Schedule Concerning Logical Order Entry Ports

<NOTICE> SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[Release No. 34-103947; File No. SR-IEX-2025-22]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Self-Regulatory Organizations; Investors Exchange LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of Proposed Rule Change To Modify the IEX Fee Schedule Concerning Logical Order Entry Ports</SUBJECT> <DATE>September 11, 2025.</DATE> Pursuant to Section 19(b)(1)  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Act”)  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> and Rule 19b-4 thereunder, <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> notice is hereby given that, on September 4, 2025, the Investors Exchange LLC (“IEX” or the “Exchange”) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) the proposed rule change as described in Items I, II and III below, which Items have been prepared by the self-regulatory organization. The Commission is publishing this notice to solicit comments on the proposed rule change from interested persons. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  15 U.S.C. 78s(b)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  15 U.S.C. 78a. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  17 CFR 240.19b-4. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Self-Regulatory Organization's Statement of the Terms of Substance of the Proposed Rule Change</HD> Pursuant to the provisions of Section 19(b)(1) under the Act  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> and Rule 19b-4 thereunder, <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> the Exchange is filing with the Commission a proposed rule change to modify the IEX Fee Schedule (“Fee Schedule”), pursuant to IEX Rules 15.110(a) and (c), to increase fees for logical order entry ports (also referred to as “Order Entry Ports”). <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  15 U.S.C. 78s(b)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  17 CFR 240.19b-4. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  Market participants use logical order entry ports to send order messages to, and receive responses from exchanges ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> confirmations, fills, or errors). Logical order entry ports can use either the industry standard Financial Information eXchange (“FIX”) messaging protocol or binary protocols to transmit, receive, and process messages. IEX offers only FIX order entry ports and the fee comparisons discussed in the Statutory Basis section below are to FIX order entry ports offered by other exchanges. </FTNT> Changes to the Fee Schedule pursuant to this proposal are effective upon filing, <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> and will be operative beginning on October 1, 2025. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  15 U.S.C. 78s(b)(3)(A)(ii). </FTNT> The text of the proposed rule change is available at the Exchange's website at <E T="03">https://www.iexexchange.io/resources/regulation/rule-filings</E> and at the principal office of the Exchange. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Self-Regulatory Organization's Statement of the Purpose of, and the Statutory Basis for, the Proposed Rule Change</HD> In its filing with the Commission, the self-regulatory organization included statements concerning the purpose of and basis for the proposed rule change and discussed any comments it received on the proposed rule change. The text of these statements may be examined at the places specified in Item IV below. The self-regulatory organization has prepared summaries, set forth in Sections A, B, and C below, of the most significant aspects of such statements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Self-Regulatory Organization's Statement of the Purpose of, and the Statutory Basis for, the Proposed Rule Change</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Purpose</HD> IEX is proposing to modify its Fee Schedule, pursuant to IEX Rules 15.110(a) and (c), to increase fees for logical order entry ports (also referred to as “Order Entry Ports”) in excess of those provided free of charge from $250 per month to $450 per month, and reduce the number of Order Entry Ports offered free of charge from five to three. The Exchange has charged port fees since October 1, 2019. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> As described more fully below, the proposed fee described herein for Order Entry Ports is comparable to, or lower than, fees charged by other equities exchanges with similar or lower market share to IEX for order entry ports at their primary data centers. <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Securities Exchange Act Release No. 86626 (August 9, 2019), 84 FR 41793 (August 15, 2019) (SR-IEX-2019-07). In June 2024, the Exchange increased port fees in excess of five ports per subscriber from $100 to $250 per month; Securities Exchange Act Release No. 100085 (May 9, 2024), 89 FR 42528 (May 15, 2024) (SR-IEX-2024-08). </FTNT> Similar to other equities exchanges, the Exchange offers FIX Order Entry Ports at IEX's primary data center, also known as “sessions,” for order entry and receipt of trade execution reports and order messages. can also choose to connect to the Exchange indirectly through a session maintained by a third-party Service Bureau. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> Service Bureau sessions may provide access to one or multiple Members on a single session. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> The number of sessions assigned to each port subscriber as of August 1, 2025 ranges from one to 311, depending on the scope and scale of the User's trading activity on the Exchange (either through a direct connection or through a Service Bureau) as determined by the User. <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> For example, by using multiple sessions, Members can segregate order flow from different internal desks, trading strategies, business lines, or customers. IEX does not impose any minimum or maximum requirements for how many Order Entry Ports a port subscriber can maintain, and it is not proposing to impose any minimum or maximum requirements. <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  Logical connectivity for order entry is provided via network switch and cabling infrastructure at the IEX Primary Data Center that delivers order and execution messages, as well as server infrastructure that runs software processes responsible for validating and formatting such messages for either internal or external consumption. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> IEX Rule 1.160(s). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  Service Bureaus, which offer technology-based services to other companies for a fee, may access the Exchange's Order Entry Ports on behalf of one or more Members. <E T="03">See</E> IEX Rule 11.130(d). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>  Members and Service Bureaus are collectively referred to herein as “port subscribers.” </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>  Users who connect to the Exchange's Order Entry Ports are either Members that connect directly to the Exchange, or Service Bureaus through which one or more Members connect to the Exchange. Because it is the Exchange's Members that send orders to the Exchange (either directly or through a Service Bureau), this rule filing focuses on the expected impact on Members. However, because IEX assigns Order Entry Ports to Users, which includes Service Bureaus that provide connectivity to Members, the impact of the proposed fee on Service Bureaus will be addressed whenever relevant. <E T="03">See</E> IEX Rule 1.160(qq). </FTNT> Currently the Exchange charges a monthly fee of $250 per Order Entry Port and offers up to five ports per subscriber free of charge. The Exchange now proposes to amend the Fee Schedule to reduce the number of free ports per subscriber from five to three, and to increase the monthly port fee, which would apply to the fourth port and each port purchased thereafter, from $250 to $450. As the Exchange continues to invest in upgrading its technology, product features, and system infrastructure, IEX determined that the new level of port fees and reduction in the number of free ports, as described herein, is appropriate and comparable to other similarly situated exchanges. The Exchange is proposing to continue to provide Order Entry Ports at the Disaster Recovery Data Center and IEX Testing Facility, <SU>14</SU> <FTREF/> as well as drop copy ports and market data ports, free of charge. <SU>15</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>14</SU>  Logical ports to connect to the Disaster Recovery or Test Facilities also would not count toward the three free Order Entry Port calculation. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>15</SU>  Confirmations of orders and execution reports are transmitted by the Exchange over the Order Entry Port that was used to enter the order. A “drop copy” contains redundant information that a Member chooses to have “dropped” to another destination ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> to allow the Member's back office and/or compliance department, or another Member—typically the Member's clearing broker—to have immediate access to the information). Drop copies can only be sent via a drop copy port. Drop copy ports cannot be used to enter orders. </FTNT> As detailed below, the proposed fee is less than fees charged for comparable port connectivity by other equities exchanges with similar or lower market share to IEX, and identical to port fees charged by one exchange with lower market share. The Exchange proposes to implement the changes to the Fee Schedule pursuant to this proposal on October 1, 2025. In general, the Exchange believes that exchanges, in setting fees of all types, should meet very high standards of transparency to demonstrate why each new fee or fee increase meets the Exchange Act requirements. The Exchange believes this high standard is especially important when an exchange imposes fees for market participants to access an exchange's marketplace. The Exchange believes the proposed fee is reasonable when compared with the fees charged by other equities exchanges with similar or lower market share for FIX order entry ports at their primary data centers. More specifically, as described in the Statutory Basis section, the proposed port fee is lower than the port fees charged by other equities exchanges with similar or lower market share as IEX for comparable port ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 35k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━