Gissing’s new range of MiFID and FAST Protocol products – a summary
We have made what must seem like a bewildering number of new product announcements over the past few weeks, so we thought it would be useful to summarise the set of announcements so the relevance of each product becomes clear.
First, some background:
FAST Protocol (FIX Adapted for Streaming) is the latest protocol defined by FIX Protocol Limited (FPL), this has been designed to compress transmitted data much more effectively than other protocols. In tests, the FAST Protocol has been shown to reduce bandwidth requirements by almost 90%!
The FAST Protocol has been proposed by FPL for use in MiFID applications, and it’s becoming clear that many organisations will choose to do this. A representative of one major investment bank recently stated that the bank would adopt FAST Protocol for MiFID purposes and that anyone that wasn’t planning on doing so should think again. (I’m paraphrasing, his actual statement was much blunter than that).
MiFID – the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive is EU regulation due to come into force in November 2007 containing detailed provisions for:
- passporting - enabling firms to do business across the EU
- transparency – the publication of pre-trade quotes and post-trade data
- best execution – delivering best execution to clients, and providing an audit trail to demonstrate it
We have a more complete analysis of MiFID here.
The product announcements
We initially announced a FASTunnel product to enable the conversion of FIX Protocol traffic to FAST and vice versa. This is both a viable product but is also enabling technology for our other products.
Then we announced three further FAST products:
- FAST Output handler for Gissing ConteX
- FAST Feed handler for RMDS
- FAST Feed gateway to enable aggregation of multiple FAST data feeds
Each of these is a product in its own right, but each also enables us to build something else, so the FAST Feed Handler enables us to deliver FAST Protocol feeds both to RMDS but also into the feed gateway.
Then we announced three MiFID specific products:
- MiFID Pre-trade output handler
- MiFID Post-trade output handler
- MiFID Aggregation Gateway
The first two are simply specific implementations of the FAST Output handler incorporating the appropriate MiFID data structures; these provide a mechanism for firms to comply with the transparency requirements of MiFID. The third product is a MiFID implementation of the FAST Feed gateway to enable firms to filter MiFID pricing data and provide only the most relevant external data onto their market data platform in order to support their best execution activities.
Finally, we announced a smaller, lighter and more cost effective version of our market leading multivendor contribution system, Gissing ConteX MCS. Gissing ConteX Express is designed for smaller organisations with more modest contribution requirements, and it will support the new FAST and MiFID Output handlers, providing access to Gissing’s MiFID product set to smaller organisations.
If you would like any more information about our new FAST or MiFID products, or about Gissing ConteX Express then please contact us.
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