22 December, 2025 (London): The FIX Trading Community, the industry association that manages the world’s trading language, the FIX Protocol, is seeking industry feedback on its suggested changes to the way institutions perform securities lending.
FIX has published a gap analysis and recommended practices and is asking industry participants to provide their views by 31 January, 2026. The solution seeks to standardise trade execution workflows and introduce the benefits of the open-source FIX Protocol to a part of the capital markets ecosystem which has not leveraged the standard until now. Presently, the lack of open source protocol and standardised workflows result in the need for a custom tech builds and budgets with each new vendor, partner, or counterpart; and the lack of electronification impacts firms’ ability to analyse data.
The proposed recommended practices leverage existing FIX messaging for securities lending electronic trade execution. Utilising FIX is the best solution for the industry, as all firms already have in-house expertise supporting their equity and fixed income execution platforms.
FIX Executive Director Jim Kaye said the adoption of FIX will improve market quality, enable firms to transact at scale, enhance liquidity through broader participation, and reduce barriers to entry for new innovative solutions. “There is no reason securities lending should not be as efficient as other parts of the market, improving market resiliency, innovation, and efficiency,” he said. “We hope these new practices, once reviewed and confirmed by the industry, will underpin this transformation.”
Rachel Andreassian, Head of Product and Market Structure at Provable Markets and co-chair of the FIX securities lending working group added, “As a service provider to some of the top Securities Finance institutions, I’m excited to be part of the team that is introducing FIX to a market that can greatly benefit from a common language. By lowering the complexity and costs that typically come with integrating and automating, participants can feel more confident in adding new solutions and providers, allowing them to grow their businesses.”
Feedback can be provided by email at fix@fixtrading.org.
The FIX Trading Community is an independent global community where capital markets firms come together to solve common issues and shape the evolution of capital markets. FIX groups in over 60 countries are working on a range of global issues including digital assets; reference data; carbon trading; AI; algo trading; FICC and ETFs, while country and regional committees work together to manage local regulation and market structure matters.
For further information and interviews with Jim Kaye:
Kristin Westlake, The Continuum Partners | kwestlake@thecontinuumpartners.com | +61 416 219 358/+1 (604) 966 1410