On a rainy London day, financial market participants arrived at Old Billingsgate Market for the FIX EMEA trading conference.

Demystifying FIX: The Financial Information eXchange Protocol Explained

The FIX protocol has become the backbone of electronic trading in the financial industry. It allows traders to exchange real-time trade and price information across different networks, regardless of their technology platform. FIX has become the de-facto messaging standard for pre-trade, trade, and post-trade communication, and it is compatible with almost every commonly used network technology. Learn more about FIX.

Insights from the FIX EMEA Trading Conference

The FIX EMEA Trading Conference is one of the most important events in the financial trading calendar. It brings together key players in the industry to pressing issues facing the institutional community and provides a neutral platform for participants to share their ideas on how the community can continue to collaborate.

Regulation was a key focus of the conference with a keynote speech from Andrew Griffith MP, City Minister and Economic Secretary to the Treasury, alongside talk around T+1 settlements, consolidated tape and interesting side panels on DLT and innovation in the markets.

The Future of Settlements: T+1and Beyond

Settlement processes are a critical part of financial trading, and T+1 settlement is set to become the new standard in the industry. With the US SEC confirming their intention for firms to implement the accelerated settlement time from 28th May 2024, T+1 is not only a pressing issue but also one which will likely entail widespread changes in not only market operation but also participant behaviours. The increased focus on post-trade processes means digitisation, automation and investment in operations are at levels not seen in a long time. This is one of the reasons why ipushpull has seen significant interest from both operations departments at sell-side and buy-side and key data providers of reference data and corporate actions. ipushpull is able to integrate data directly into a user's workflow meaning real-time queries and responses across a variety of data providers and applications such as chat and Excel.

DLT, Blockchain and Atomic Settlement

With thoughts on whether the UK and EU should follow suit with T+1, the panel on DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) discussed atomic settlement where no clearing is required. Even though the technology is still in its early adopter phase its already showing promise with SDX (SIX Digital Exchange) already issuing digital bonds.

The discussion centred on whether the UK and EU should follow suit with T+1. While the technology is still in its infancy, it's clear that there are significant advantages to atomic settlement. It can potentially lower costs, reduce counterparty risks, and increase efficiency in the financial markets.

Improving Data Standards & Trading Workflows: The Industry's Top Priorities

In a crowd heavy with traders, a survey asked “what is the one thing that you would like the industry to be working on right now?”. 42% answered that they wanted improved data standards and 32% wanted better electronic and integrated trading workflows.

ipushpull’s FIX service is already used across banks and a leading IDB to map and transform FIX messages into chat messages that are fully integrated into the bank's existing workflow. After using these tools the IDB saw 70% of trades booked through bot automation as opposed to zero beforehand.

Enhancing Trade Efficiency with ipushpull's FIX and Chat Integration

ipushpull CEO, Matthew Cheung, caught up with Fintech Focus TV to discuss how important FIX is to the financial markets and how ipushpull customers are already using FIX for a variety of use cases around:

• • FIX / Chat - Using IPP bot framework to map pre- and post-trade FIX messages to and from chat platforms like Symphony, Teams and Slack
  • FIX / Excel - Same as above but mapping to Excel
  • FIX / Webpage - Mapping to IPP Workspace (in a browser)

Judging by the reaction of attendees during the conference, and afterwards, on their socials, everyone was thrilled to be back at Old Billingsgate and seeing peers, ex-colleagues and even competitors. Thanks to FIX EMEA for a great conference and we look forward to seeing how all the initiatives above progress over the next year. To learn more about our FIX integrations, get in touch.