Charles River is the first order management systems (OMS) vendor and only the second market participant to receive the certification.

FPL's FIX Certification program, designed to improve the overall quality and consistency of FIX protocol usage across the industry, provides asset managers with standardized FIX messaging. The first phase of the certification program, launched in January 2005, focuses on fixed income securities and covers pre-trade, trade, and post-trade processing of treasury, agency, and corporate bonds. Charles River completed the certification process with FIX 4.4, using TransactTools' OpenFIX.net FIX testing service. Charles River is also the only organization to complete the FPL testing for all three steps of the trade.

"In order to effectively automate and simplify fixed income trade processing, it is especially urgent for market participants to begin incorporating standardized FIX messaging in their workflows. This FIX certification standardizes trade communications and ensures particular trade details are included with the associated message type," said Sang Lee, managing partner at Aite Group, an independent research and advisory firm for the financial services industry. "FIX and the certification process are extremely important. Charles River is taking a critical first step in getting market participants to quickly adopt an agreed upon messaging standard; the sooner firms start to incorporate these workflows the better."

"We view Charles River's successful completion of the FPL Fixed Income Certification Program as a significant step not only for the expansion of FIX in the fixed income marketplace, but also for the FPL Certification program itself," commented Brian Gay, VP Sales at TransactTools. "The Fixed Income Working Group, along with firms like TransactTools, invested significantly in the development of this new public service. But it is only through participation of market-leaders like Charles River that the working group will achieve its objective of increasing widespread adoption of FIX for fixed income trading."