Financial messaging bodies have agreed a common 'investment roadmap' designed to guide market participants through the confusing maze of multiple overlapping industry standards within the securities industry.
The blueprint, initially introduced in 2008, lays the groundwork for moving towards one common business model, ISO 20022, while allowing the respective standards organisations to continue maintaining their existing protocols - FIX, ISO, FpML and XBRL.
The coalition of standards setters - including Swift FPL, FpML, FISD, XBRL US and Isitc - say the roadmap's purpose is to provide market participants consistent direction when using financial services messaging standards by visually mapping the protocols to their appropriate business processes across asset classes.
Gerard Hartsink, senior EVP, ABN Amro, and convenor of the ISO 20022 Registration Management Group (RMG), says: "The investment roadmap is an important step in the harmonisation of the securities industry using the ISO 20022 business model and domain specific syntaxes. It is an idea that can be leveraged by other business areas to support their plans for ISO 20022 interoperability and adoption."
Finextra verdict The Tower of babel still stands! The plumbing may continue to spring the odd leak here and there, but no need just yet to rip out the old pipework and install a modern press and flush system. After all, that might just undermine the foundations on which the old standards are built. And that wouldn't do at all.