Fidessa has opened a Post-trade Confirmation Hub which allows buy-side and sell-side firms to confirm trades between themselves via the open source messaging protocol FIX.
The service - which covers global equities trading - removes the need for proprietary alternatives that charge on a per message basis, says the vendor. Users will instead pay a fixed fee to sign up to the Fidessa workspace.
Steve Grob, director of group strategy at Fidessa says there is no competitive edge in one proprietary approach over any other.
"For some time the industry has been looking at post-trade as a key battleground in the war on daily operating costs," he says. "Recent fragmentation into competing alternatives has simply made the whole process even more inefficient for market participants of all types."
Fidessa has been working with Fix Protocol Limited, the member-driven initiative which oversees development of the standard, to determine how FIX could be emebedded within its post-trade workflow.
For FIX, the Hub opens new opportunities away from traditional front-office broker-driven strongholds into the back office plumbing that connects the sell-side with buy-side investors.
Fidessa's David Pearson, who is co-chair of the FPL Emea Post-trade Working Group, comments: "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. By standardising the workflow for all our buy- and sell-side customers we are able to provide a straight-forward and effective middle office environment. In addition, firms can leverage the existing FIX infrastructure they already have in place for routing order flow."