FPL says over the past year there has been a growth in the number of services offered by brokers to the buyside - particularly in the area of direct market access (DMA) and algorithmic trading - and the interface requirements for each service vary from broker to broker.

Although the internal workings of algorithmic trading engines are proprietary and business-sensitive and will not be discussed in an open forum, FPL says the group will work to ensure that the various interface requirements from buyside systems to the algorithmic trading engine are properly covered by the FIX protocol.

The working group is open to all FPL member firms and will be headed by Chris Sims, head of information systems development at Gartmore Investment Management.