Fidessa Group has launched an open post-trade Confirmation Hub which allows buy-side and sell-side firms to confirm trades between themselves via FIX.

The service will enable firms to send and receive allocation and confirmation instructions to each other via an open, free-to-use protocol, eliminating the need for proprietary alternatives that charge on a per message basis.

“It fundamentally changes how that process is run – rather than using proprietary (e.g. fax) or 3rd party solutions, banks, brokers and asset managers can now run the affirmations and confirmations process on their existing FIX infrastructure,” said Steve Grob, director of group strategy at Fidessa. “This hugely simplifies the process and saves everyone a lot of money.”

For some time the industry has been looking at post-trade as a key battleground in the war on daily operating costs. “What we found was that, while many of the processes are hugely important, there is no competitive edge in one proprietary approach over any other,” Grob said. “Recent fragmentation into competing alternatives has simply made the whole process even more inefficient for market participants of all types.”

Fidessa worked closely with FIX Protocol Limited (FPL) to determine how an open and free standard like FIX could be embedded within its post-trade workflow.

“Our approach has been to focus on both the messaging standards that the industry wants to adopt and the business process for the operational users,” said Fidessa’s David Pearson, who is co-chair of the FPL EMEA Post-trade Working Group. “By standardizing the workflow for all our buy- and sell-side customers we are able to provide a straightforward and effective middle office environment. In addition, firms can leverage the existing FIX infrastructure they already have in place for routing order flow.”

The service announced will be available through a centralized hub that uses Fidessa’s existing post-trade workflow, already in use by over 300 sell-side firms globally. Buy-side firms that are already part of the FIX initiative include American Century Investments and Capital Group.

“We have asked all of our brokers to support FIX for allocation and confirmation messaging, and many of our brokers use Fidessa’s post-trade solutions,” said Scott Atwell, manager of FIX trading and connectivity at American Century Investments and a participant in the FIX standardization effort.

“We have been working closely with Fidessa, leveraging their open hub, to implement FIX as a post-trade standard,” Atwell said. “The benefits in using FIX include efficiency gains, improved straight-through processing and quicker identification of issues, all of which provide significant risk reduction and cost savings.”

Fidessa’s Post-trade Confirmation Hub is the first in a series of initiatives by the firm aimed at simplifying post-trade workflow. “We have always focused on removing unnecessary complexity in our industry,” said Grob. “Until now these efforts have been largely focused in the front office, but we’re now bringing the same intelligent workflow into new areas such as post-trade.”