London, New York, Hong Kong, 17 May 2021: The FIX Trading Community, the non-profit, industry-driven standards body at the heart of global financial trading and the Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association (Global DCA), the global self-regulatory association for the digital asset & cryptocurrency industry, each recognize that their complementary efforts can be strategically combined to further promote standardization for trading digital assets. The organizations have therefore agreed to share information and experience to achieve their common goals.

The FIX Trading Community owns and maintains the FIX Protocol and has an active Digital Asset Working Group (DAWG) focused on the use of FIX for the electronic trading of digital assets. The DAWG co-chairs also participate in ISO TC68/SC8/WG3 in the development of other standards for this industry. The Global DCA was established to guide the evolution of digital assets, cryptocurrencies, and the underlying blockchain technology within a regulatory framework designed to build public trust, foster market integrity, and maximize economic opportunity for all participants.

The FIX Trading Community DAWG and Global DCA will cooperate to promote the development and use of standards for the entire life cycle of the electronic trading of digital assets from buyside, sell-side, exchanges/trading venues, settlement/custody, and regulatory compliance/reporting.

Tony Pettipiece, Board of Directors and Chair of the Policy & Regulation Committee at the Global DCA commented: “We are excited to be working with the FIX Trading Community to help shape the evolving standards for the trading of digital assets, and also to leverage the expertise of GDCA members by FIX institutional traders as their participation in digital assets continues to grow.”

Sean Ristau, co-chair FIX Digital Asset Working Group, EVP of Account Management & Solution Engineering, Prime Trust commented: “Promoting the use of clear standards is central to the FIX Trading Community mission. As the de facto standard for electronic trading, we are excited about the opportunity for FIX to become ubiquitous in the trading of digital assets. Cross collaboration is key and has helped the digital asset community with the hyper growth being experienced. We look forward to working with the Global DCA and its’ membership to promote standards for the evolving digital economy.”

About FIX Trading Community

FIX Trading Community is the non-profit, industry-driven standards body at the heart of global trading.The organisation is independent and neutral, dedicated to addressing real business and regulatory issues impacting multi-asset trading in global markets through standardisation, delivering operational efficiency, increased transparency, and reduced costs and risks for all market participants. Central to FIX Trading Community’s work is the continuous development and promotion of the FIX family of standards, including the core FIX Protocol messaging language, which has revolutionised the trading environment and has successfully become the way the world trades.  Visit www.fixtrading.org  for more information.

About Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association (Global DCA)

Global DCA is a global self-regulatory association for the digital asset & cryptocurrency industry. It was established to guide the evolution of digital assets, cryptocurrencies, and the underlying blockchain technology within a regulatory framework designed to build public trust, foster market integrity and maximize economic opportunity for all participants.

Its broad-based membership includes spot and derivative exchanges, proprietary trading firms, traders, investors, asset managers, brokerage firms, FCMs, custodians, decentralized technology organizations, banks, legal firms, audit firms, insurance professionals, academics, consultants, & media.

To fulfill its mission, Global DCA devises standards and consensus-based solutions that address the major challenges facing the digital asset and cryptocurrency industry. The organization collaborates with stakeholders around the world, industry leaders and policymakers to support the growth of the global digital economy and

• Advocates for a regulatory environment that facilitates innovation and protectsconsumers, stakeholders and the broader public interest world-wide;
• Provides education, training, certification and other resources to build human and technical capacity; and
• Provides thought leadership and facilitatesindustry engagement.

Contacts:
Kathleen Callahan at Kathleen.callahan@fixtrading.org, Operations Director, FIX Trading Community
Tony Pettipiece at Tony.Pettipiece@global-DCA.org, Chair of Policy & Regulation Committee, Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association (Global DCA)

London, New York, Hong Kong, 29 October 2020: FIX Trading Community, the non-profit, industry-driven standards body at the heart of global financial trading, announced today their publication of recommended practices for Trade and Post-Trade Bilateral and Tri-Party Repurchase Agreements (Repos).  These recommended practices were produced to define industry practices for the common usage of FIX messaging for Request for Quote (RFQ), Quote, and trade messages for repurchase agreements (repos).

The FIX Repo working group was established to develop a standardized method for automating the full life cycle of Repos to improve efficiencies and reduce risks.   The post-trade workflows include allocations, confirmation, collateral assignment and lifecycle events.  Clearing and settlement workflows will be addressed in subsequent publications.

This effort was focused on leveraging existing FIX messaging to support the Repo requirements.  During the review process the group identified gaps in the FIX Protocol necessary to support the Repo bilateral and tri-party trade and post-trade workflows.  These gaps were addressed in an extension pack which can be found here.

Please use the below links to access the recommended practices documentation:

Recommended Practices Trade Bi-lateral and Tri-party Repos

Recommended Practices Post-Trade Bi-lateral and Tri-party Repos

Steven Kelly, Chair FIX Repo Working Group, Director, Product Management, BrokerTec said, “BrokerTec welcomes the introduction of the FIX recommended guidelines for the repo market.  I would like to take the opportunity to thank the cross-sectional working group for their dedication in developing these industry guidelines. We fully support the working groups guidelines to improve efficiencies and reduce risk for repos, which will benefit the industry as a whole.  BrokerTec Quote, our platform for European Repos launched last year, has adopted these guidelines which has greatly benefited our clients.”

Richard Comotto, Senior Consultant, International Capital Market Association (ICMA) commented, “ICMA welcomes the latest version of FIX for repo. The standardized messaging provided by FIX is important for ensuring immediate, clear and complete trade and post-trade communication between many parties in the repo market. The quality of communication is becoming ever more important as regulators intensify requirements to report within ever tighter timeframes under SFTR and move towards the penalization of settlement failures under CSDR. Standardized messaging is also an essential business requirement in helping firms to reduce the operational costs of repairing and reprocessing poor data, and in minimizing the risks of inaccurate or incomplete transactional information. ICMA is pleased to have been able to contribute to this work.”

Lisa Taikitsadaporn, Technical Program Manager, FIX Trading Community, Managing Partner, Brook Path Partners commented, “While FIX has supported trading of Repurchase Agreements since FIX 4.4 was published in 2003, with the changes in the regulatory landscape and trading needs, it was time to revisit FIX’s support for Repo and make necessary adjustments.  As a result, there were a few gaps in the FIX Protocol standard that needed to be addressed and the prior implementation guidelines published in 2003 were brought up-to-date. Standardization of Repo concepts in FIX will help with data quality when these transactions are reported to regulators.”

– ENDS –

About FIX Trading Community

FIX Trading Community is the non-profit, industry-driven standards body at the heart of global trading.

The organisation is independent and neutral, dedicated to addressing real business and regulatory issues impacting multi-asset trading in global markets through standardisation, delivering operational efficiency, increased transparency, and reduced costs and risks for all market participants. Central to FIX Trading Community’s work is the continuous development and promotion of the FIX family of standards, including the core FIX Protocol messaging language, which has revolutionised the trading environment and has successfully become the way the world trades.  Visit www.fixtrading.org  for more information.

Contacts:
Neena Dholani
FIX Trading Community
Tel: +44 (0)20 3950 3934
neena.dholani@fixtrading.org