INDUSTRY GROUPS ISSUE ROADMAP FOR MAKING FINANCIAL MESSAGING STANDARDS INTEROPERABLE

Posted May 5, 2008

NEW YORK – FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) has issued an Investment Roadmap to govern messaging standards usage by visually mapping industry standard protocols FIX, ISO and FpML [Financial Products Markup Language] to the appropriate business processes across major asset classes.

“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,” says Scott Atwell, Manager of FIX Trading & Connectivity at American Century Investments, Co-Chair of the FPL Global Steering Committee. “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.”

The collaboration on the Roadmap will prepare the industry to move toward ISO 20022 as the one common financial messaging standard, while maintaining existing independent protocols.

“This is the first time the major financial standards organizations have come together to map out the different asset classes and parts of the trade lifecycle they each focus on,” says Karel Engelen, Head of FpML at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA). “The roadmap allows the financial community to better direct its IT infrastructure and helps the standard organizations to improve interoperability between their respective standards.”

The Roadmap also prepares a path for future messaging standards initiatives by identifying gaps and areas of overlap. Standards interoperability will depend on “peering,” or setting transition points for shifting from one standard to another.

“The great news is that standardization organizations are working together to ensure some level of interoperability,” says Jamie Shay, Head of Standards at SWIFT. “Most financial practitioners now recognize the challenges associated with multiple standards and are not looking to create additional standards to represent financial transactions in a new way. The financial community is able to deal more effectively with the existence of multiple standards due to the availability of tools that enable interoperability.”

FPL, FpML/ISDA, SWIFT and ISITC [International Securities Association for Institutional Trade Communication] are working together on the Roadmap initiative. The Roadmap can be found at www.fixprotocol.org/investmentroadmap.