Cap Gemini/ORIGO
Dwight Arthur / Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation
18 Jul 2000 9:42AM ETThe following from Alan P. Jenkins of Cap Gemini on 13 July, UK followed by my response on 18 July.
Alan writes:
Hi, Dwight.
You contacted Francis Hellawell here, back in April, about convergence or interoperability with FIX.
Yesterday there was a meeting of the UK Technical Standards Committee (TSC), which is the officially recognised standards forum for the UK Securities Industry. Cap Gemini (Tony Goldsmith and I), plus Michael Fordham (who has just left us to join iii), outlined the work we have done and which is now available through Origo. As a result, the TSC will now seek to raise international awareness, both of this work, and of Origo in general.
Also, the person present from S.W.I.F.T. said that they have a work item this fall, to look at extending ISO 15022 into Mutual Funds. So there is widespread interest in convergence or interoperability - although GSTPA and FIX must be a lot further down this track (I met John Goeller a couple of times last year)...
As I have an international role within Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, I will be the 'single point of contact' for our firm. I am already known to some of the FIX Executive, and I already speak daily with my Cap Gemini colleagues in New York.
Please let me know the latest status, and please come back to me whenever appropriate.
Alan P. Jenkins
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young
Global Finance Centre, U.K.
Internal [SAV-6W] 700 5637
External +44 870 904 5637
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Dwight responds:
Alan,
Great to hear from you!
The Mutual Funds working group in FIX issued a call, in April, for submissions reflecting established or proposed protocols for trading and settling investments in mutual fiunds and/or other collective or managed investments. We received submissions reflecting EMX in the UK, fund/SERV in the US, and the IFSA in Australia.
As you might imagine, there are some significant differences in market practice among these three markets, and this causes considerable disparity among the three models. However, it is our preliminary assessment that there are a series of atomic roles that are the same across all three, and a series of transactions between these roles that are very similar. However, in each market, one player will play multiple roles, with the resulting internalization of some transaction types. the groupings of internalized roles are different per market, which makes the markets look very different. It is our assessment that if we can discover the atomic roles and rtransactions between them, we will have a basis for messaging that will be globally applicable.
To that end we are developing and comparing role-and-relationship models of these three markets. I think that it would be extremely productive if you could produce a similar model showing the parties, roles and transactions involved in your work, and join into the conference calls (next one is Monday 24 July 10:30am Lomdon time).
Do you have a profile on the FIX Protocol Organization's website? If not please go to http://www.fixprotocol.org and register. Please be certain to subscribe to the Mutual Funds discussion at the bottom of the profile. When this is complete please send me a request to join the working group and I will enroll you.
Related to your other questions, S.W.I.F.T. may or may not be in discussions with FIX leaders about potentially registering the FIX messages into the catalog of messages in the ISO 15022 data field dictionary and registering any new, unique data fields from FIX. S.W.I.F.T. have not responded to an invitation to join the FIX working group on Mutual Funds but would still be welcome if they decided to participate.
Separately the FIXml working group in the Fix Protocol Organization continues to develop an XML version of the FIX protocol. As a part of that effort, John Goeller (leader of the FIXml working group) is the chair of the ISO 15022 XML Committee Advisory Group which seeks to make the ISO 15022 data field dictionary a more effective foundation for defining XML, and then use that foundation as a basis for driving interoperability between various flavors of financial services XML including FIX, S.W.I.F.T. and others. Swift is heavily supporting this effort.
-Dwight
