Fixed Income, FX & Derivatives
Standards and best practices covering fixed income, FX, listed and OTC derivatives.
FIX has played a central role in the electronification of fixed income, FX and derivatives markets by extending its open, standardised messaging framework beyond its equity origins to support the full trade lifecycle across multiple asset classes.
Building on early industry initiatives from the early 2000s to address gaps in cash fixed income workflows, FIX enhancements were made to support activities such as indications of interest, execution reporting and post-trade allocations, helping move the market away from fragmented, proprietary interfaces towards consistent and interoperable electronic processes. At the same time, regulatory change—particularly the shift of OTC derivatives onto electronic venues—drove further development of FIX-based standards and recommended practices to support derivatives trading workflows.
Work continues today as trading becomes increasingly automated, complexity increases and consistency of data becomes essential.
The lack of standardisation in how sell side firms enable buy side clients (users, accounts, and permissions) on execution venues. Historically, entitlement and client onboarding processes have been manual, fragmented, and venue specific. FIX undertook an exercise in 2013, partly driven by regulatory requirements (e.g., Dodd-Frank and MiFID II) to move OTC derivative activity on-venue. This sought to define a common, FIX based approach using Party Reference Data messages (introduced in FIX 5.0 SP2) to standardise how entitlements are created, managed, and communicated across Dealer to Client (D2C) workflows. The purpose was to provide practical, implementation ready guidance to improve efficiency, reduce operational risk, and support regulatory-driven market structure changes.
The scope focused on entitlement messaging between sell side firms and execution venues for OTC markets (fixed income, swaps, FX), covering workflows such as user setup, permissioning, updates, and reporting; it explicitly excludes broader onboarding processes, direct sell side/buy side communication, and non D2C contexts.
These include:
- Recommended Practices for Party Entitlements – OTC Markets (Fixed Income Instruments) - Defines standard FIX based workflows and message implementations for managing party entitlements between sell side firms and execution venues in OTC fixed income markets.
- Recommended Practices for Party Entitlements – OTC Markets (Swaps) - Extends the fixed income entitlement framework to swaps markets, detailing workflows and FIX message usage specific to derivatives trading enablement and venue interactions.
- Recommended Practices for Party Entitlements – FX OTC Markets - Adapts and expands the entitlement standards for foreign exchange markets, including additional workflows (e.g. prime brokerage and stream assignment) and instrument specific entitlement models for FX trading.
Links to relevant publications, standards, and reference materials from external industry organisations that support fixed income market practices and interoperability. Documents listed here are maintained by their respective organisations and are provided as reference material for the benefit of the FIX Trading Community. The FIX Trading Community does not own or maintain these publications.
These include:
- ICMA's Updated Bond Price Distribution Definitions - Industry taxonomy and definitions for market-runs, streaming prices and axes in fixed income markets.
