FIX Protocol Limited (FPL) and the Software and Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) Financial Information Services Division (FISD) have signed an agreement to work together on improving the interoperability of data standards and increasing the industry’s adoption of STP. The statement of understanding formalises the relationship between the two non-profit organisations that has been ongoing for some time and paves the way for them to collaborate on reference and market data industry best practices.
FPL, which owns the intellectual property rights of the Financial Information eXchange Protocol (FIX), indicates it will work with the securities industry focused FISD to improve operational transparency, integration and interoperability between market participants and regulators.
Jim Northey, co-chair of the FPL Americas Regional Committee and its industry standards liaison, reckons the formalisation of the agreement will facilitate even greater collaboration: “The result of which will be of significant benefit to all industry participants in the area of reference data standards and transparency.”
Bill Nichols, FISD programme director for securities automation processing, claims that the fact that the barriers are breaking down between market and reference data will spur on collaboration between the two. “FISD and FPL are uniquely positioned to provide our members with a venue within which to cover all aspects of the landscape, from legal issues to down and dirty technical details,” he adds.
FPL has agreed to actively contribute to the FISD Data Model Working Group, which was recently formed to consolidate and extend existing instrument data models into a framework that addresses the business issues exposed by the current credit crisis. These issues include the intermittent and inconsistent reconciliation of business and technical practices across merged and acquired platforms, and the relationship between streaming trade data and reference/proprietary information stored in multiple relational databases, says FISD.
Similarly, FISD has also recently agreed to collaborate with JWG-IT with a view to increasing the value of the activities of its risk and regulation and data model working groups.
