FIX for Mutual Funds Status

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Imported from previous forum

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[ original email was from Dwight Arthur - darthur@dtcc.com ]
Many of you were involved in our kick-off conference call in February. This message is an update on our current status.

In February, we agreed to collect current protocol specifications from EMX, DTCC, and if possible Cap Gemini by March, and then look towards depeloping a converged specification drawing on these sources.

There have been various issues in collecting these source specifications, and none are yet available. I expect the EMX and DTCC specifications to be released in mid-May. The Cap Gemini specification is now in the hands or ORIGO, a UK standards body whose primary work to date has apparently been in Insurance, ORGIO is considering a request to release the specification for use in developing standards.

If and when at least the EMX and DTCC specifications are received, I will post another update.

-Dwight

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[ original email was from Dwight Arthur - darthur@dtcc.com ]
I’m pleased to announce that documentation pertaining to EMX’s implementation of Mutual Fund transaction messages is now posted on the FIX Mutual Fund Working Group’s web page. With any luck, the following link will bring you to it:

http://www.fixprotocol.org/cgi-bin/rbox/Workgroup.cgi?id=951993568&menu=951993568#archive

I still have requests to several other groups hoping to receive documentation on their current or proposed Mutual Fund messaging - watch this spot for further developments.

Here is a message from Caroline Lee, CEO of EMX:

>You can post our material anywhere - it is
>openly available to all.
>
>We would like to become a bit more involved in
>the Mutual Funds Working Group, if that is
>possible.
>
>We go live with the system in three weeks time,
>on 12 June, and will have more time then.
>
>I think that it would be useful if I gave you an
>update on where we are. With regard to our
>standards, we published them first for
>consultation last September. They have been
>sent out market wide for comment and we received
>back approximately 40 responses on them and
>changed them in October as a result. We have
>also produced a "market norms" document which
>again has been reviewed by the whole market.
>Any changes to the documentation are made
>through committees comprising all parts of the
>market.
>
>We have approximately 50 product providers (over
>70% FUM) signed up for EMX and 134 firms in
>total. We are receiving daily enquiries from
>firms who wish to join.
>
>The standards have been devised to cater for all
>possible types of intermediary, not just IFAs
>but also custodians, stockbrokers and fund
>supermarkets.
>
>The standards have been devised to cover the all
>types of UK product.
>
>Kind Regards
>Caroline Lee
>CEO EMX Co

The documentation is posted as a ZIP file which contains a collection of DOC files. If you have or know of equivalent types of documentation for other Mutual Fund messaging schemes please contact me.

Dwight Arthur
Chair, FIX Mutual Funds Working Group
Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation
darthur@dtcc.com
+1 (212) 412-8687

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[ original email was from Dwight Arthur - darthur@dtcc.com ]
The issues with the fixprotocol.org site have apparently been resolved. On the site at http://www.fixprotocol.org/cgi-bin/Workgroup.cgi?id=951993568&menu=951993568#archive you will find the documentation received to date reflecting UK, US, and Australia. If you have, or know of, other documentation that should be included as a part of our starting point please speak up. Thanks.

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[ original email was from Dwight Arthur - darthur@dtcc.com ]
The third conference call of the Mutual Funds Working Group of the Fix Protocol Organization will be held on:
Tuesday 1 August
San Jose 1pm
NY 4pm
London 9pm
Sydney 6am (wed)

Any members wishing to participate in the call please send an email to vrufus@dtcc.com by end-of-day Sunday 30 July; on Monday I will send details ojn how to connect to those persons whose emails are in.

On July 24, the Mutual Funds Working Group of the Fix Protocol Organization held its second conference call.

Participating were:
Dwight Arthur, DTCC
Andrew Blair, BT Financial
Alan Jenkins, Cap Gemini
Peter Smith, Cap Gemini
Chris Lambert, EMX
Gerard Reddy, ?
Frank Vermessen, SWIFT

Prior to the call, we distributed draft business flow models reflecting Australian practice and US market practice.

We reviewed the strategy for the use of these models to reflect message development, as follows:

  • There are significant apparent discrepancies between roles and transactions across various markets.

  • In some cases, analysis shows that some level of basic functionality is the same across markets; however, a party will perform a different subsets of these functions in different markets. If we model at the lowest level we believe we will be able to accomodate most transactions in most markets. The differences will be that when one party performs multiple roles, some transaction flows will be internalized. Different flows will be internalized in different markets.

  • After establishing the parties, roles, and interactions we will look to define the data requirements for each transaction and then to correlate them to existing FIX messages.

  • A preliminary discussion of priorities suggested that order initiation (subscription and redemption, and possibly switches or exchanges) would be a high priority for message development, followed by messages that may be involved in reconciliation.

  • A review of this approach versus the SWIFT methodology for message standard development showed that the approaches were reasonably consistent.

  • There was some discussion about how any proposed new fields or messages would be expressed in XML, following the work of FIXml. There were further concerns related to the GSTPA approach, which has not yet been published.

  • “Mutual Funds” was found to be a regional term, with “collective investment vehicles” preferred. A request will be made to change the group’s name.