About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Leading Industry Players Back FDC3 Desktop Applications Connectivity Initiative

Subscribe to our newsletter

OpenFin is leading an initiative to bring universal connectivity and standards to the desktop applications used across capital markets. The initiative is called the Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium (FDC3) and initial members include Algomi, AllianceBernstein, Barclays, BNP Paribas, ChartIQ, Citadel, Cloud9, FactSet, Fidessa, GreenKey, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, OTAS Technologies, RBC, TP ICAP, Wellington Management Company and OpenFin.

The aim of FDC3 is to address the fractured software landscape of capital markets and deliver common software and standards across desktop applications used for trading, market data, order management, analytics and productivity to support faster decision making, improved productivity and streamlined workflow.

OpenFin, provider of an operating system created for financial markets and designed to be unifying and application agnostic, has contributed open source code to support the initiative. It is also open sourcing and making freely available its desktop connectivity technology, which is used by many large banks and buy-side and vendor firms, and providing a central app directory that will be freely accessible and allow applications to identify one another safely and securely.

Mazy Dar, CEO of OpenFin, says: “Today, the humans sitting at desktops are the integration layer between their applications. We believe the time has come to enable financial desktops with the same app interoperability that we take for granted on iOS and Android devices.”

Among the members of FDC3 commenting on the initiative, Bhupesh Vora, managing director, markets technology at Barclays, says: “Communicating and sharing context between multiple apps without the huge overhead of bespoke integration will be a massive boost to productivity for both the development community and ultimately our salespeople and traders. FDC3 will give us on the desktop what FIX gave us for server-side interoperability between venues and clients”.

Jim Adams, managing director, CIB technology at J.P. Morgan, comments: “Our corporate and investment banking staff can use anywhere between five and fifteen applications in their daily workflow. Interoperability would allow this workflow to become seamless across applications and platforms, ultimately making our employees more productive and informed when talking to internal and external clients.”

From a vendor perspective, Steve Grob, director of group strategy at Fidessa, says: “FDC3 aligns with our broader outreach to top-tier firms. In particular, the OpenFin messaging bus resonates with our own approach to provide customers with better levels of innovation and control. This is important because all banks need to move faster than ever before, but without breaking what they already have in place.”

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: How to simplify and modernize data architecture to unleash data value and innovation

The data needs of financial institutions are growing at pace as new formats and greater volumes of information are integrated into their systems. With this has come greater complexity in managing and governing that data, amplifying pain points along data pipelines. In response, innovative new streamlined and flexible architectures have emerged that can absorb and...

BLOG

Salesforce to Buy Informatica, Betting on ‘Switzerland of Data’ to Drive AI

Data management giant Informatica is to be acquired by Salesforce in a deal valued at US$8 billion, giving the CRM behemoth a cloud-based data business on which to further build its artificial intelligence ambitions. The California-based companies entered into an agreement for the deal, which will see Salesforce buy all the Informatica stock it doesn’t...

EVENT

RegTech Summit London

Now in its 9th year, the RegTech Summit in London will bring together the RegTech ecosystem to explore how the European capital markets financial industry can leverage technology to drive innovation, cut costs and support regulatory change.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2025 – Thirteenth Edition

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a unique and practical guide to capital markets regulation, regulatory change, and the data and data management requirements of compliance across Europe, the UK, US and Asia-Pacific. This year’s edition lands at a moment of accelerating regulatory divergence and intensifying data focused supervision. Inside,...