FIX Protocol Limited (FPL), the non-profit, global industry standards organisation at the heart of the electronic trading community, today announces the release of industry developed FIX guidelines to enhance the global equity post-trade process between the buy-side and sell-side.
The guidelines have been produced by the FPL Americas Buy-Side Working Group, and cover post-trade processing for both US and non-US equity markets. To view these guidelines, please click here.
FPL is an industry-driven organisation, focused on addressing the business challenges impacting the global trading community. FPL owns and promotes adoption of the free and open FIX Protocol messaging language, which has successfully become the way the world trades. The language is used extensively for equity order placement, and in response to requests from the investment management community, FPL is keen to promote adoption to support equity post-trade processing. Adoption will enable the industry to benefit from:
• Increased straight-through-processing
• Improved availability
• Enhanced transparency through ID-linked traceability from placement to pre-settlement
• Reduced costs
Promoting FIX adoption for post-trade processing is consistent with the recommendations set forth in the widely adopted Investment Roadmap, which FPL produced in collaboration with other leading standard bodies. Since its launch the Investment Roadmap has been providing the industry with clear direction as to which standards are, and should be used to support business processes throughout the various stages of the investment life cycle to provide optimal transparency, consistency and operational efficiencies.
Commenting on this development David Tolman of Greenline Financial Technologies stated "Many parties must cooperate in the post-trade process including buy-sides, broker dealers, custodian banks and central clearing. The current process is complex and requires considerable human intervention. The FIX infrastructure, knowledge and data, from the extremely successful use of FIX in order processing, can now be leveraged in the post-trade process. Extending the use of FIX substantially reduces complexity in the communication and mat and matching process, resulting in fewer matching issues, faster processing and lower costs. The availability of an industry standard will reduce implementation and on-boarding time, and the associated financial investment."
Brian Lees, Co-Chair FIX Protocol Execution Venue Subgroup of The Capital Group Companies added "The adoption of these guidelines carries with it the promise of a significant step towards achieving a higher degree of straight through processing for equity trades. The transparency made available by improved traceability from trade execution through to pre-settlement offers exciting possibilities for reducing errors and improving trade matching rates while minimising costs by leveraging existing investments in FIX infrastructure."