Options Exchanges Want to Scrap Fee Model That Makes ‘No Sense’

US equity options exchanges are seeking to change the way that regulatory fees are charged, moving away from a decades-old practice that allows them to pick up fees for business transacted on rival bourses.

The Options Regulatory Fee, or ORF, is a catch-all term for the collective fee that exchanges charge customers for buying and selling options through them. The money collected by the Options Clearing Corp., the central clearinghouse for US stock options, goes toward helping exchanges cover compliance costs, such as market surveillance.

But a quirk of the way the ORF is currently charged has long caused ...