Fix Protocol (FPL), in conjunction with fellow financial messaging standards organisations FpML/IDSA, SWIFT and ISITC, has launched the Investment Roadmap, which the firms say is designed to provide market participants with a clear guide to messaging standards usage.
The Roadmap achieves this by visually mapping the industry standard protocols – FIX, ISO, and FpML – to the appropriate business processes across the main asset classes. The firms say this collaboration lays the groundwork for moving towards one common financial messaging standard, ISO 20022, while maintaining the existing independent protocols.
As well as showing how existing messaging standards can be used, the Investment Roadmap also defines an agreed path for future initiatives by identifying gaps, as well as areas of overlap. According to the companies, the most important aspect surrounding standards interoperability focuses on the transition points where it is possible to shift from using one standard to another. They believe this will result in higher levels of interoperability for the financial services community and will save firms the cost of maintaining multiple syntaxes within the same area of the transaction life cycle.
Although the standards organisations still have to ensure that all the relevant data is delivered to the next stage of the transaction chain, they says they are closer than they have ever been before. They believe this effort will pave the way for the formation of an umbrella collaboration effort amongst various standard bodies and provide clear direction to the financial services industry.
“It is clear that the FIX Protocol is the de facto standard for pre-trade and trading, that FpML is the de facto standard for OTC Derivatives, and that ISO is the de facto standard for settlement,” said Scott Atwell, co-chair of the FPL Global Steering Committee, in a statement. “We need an approach that leverages these standards into a broader framework without reinventing and creating redundant messages that increase implementation costs and cause confusion for the industry.”
Kevin Houstoun, co-chair of the FPL Global Technical Committee added, “Historically, industry confusion around which messaging standard to use in which area has led to large amounts of money wasted. The collaboration is aimed at producing a consistent direction for financial services messaging standards and communicating that clearly.”