Markets & Regulation
Always optimising, continuously expanding, constantly adapting.
Market structure trends and regulatory reforms drive much of the agenda for the industry.
FIX works closely with a wide range of industry participants – across the buy-side, sell-side, exchanges, infrastructure providers, vendors, industry associations and regulators – to support industry adaption to evolving and dynamic markets. In addition, FIX works with regulators with a focus on promoting the use of global standards to deliver clear and unambiguous data, improve the quality of implementation and reduce costs to the industry.
By utilising its expertise in communication standards, FIX aims to drive innovation and facilitate better global information exchange across the industry. FIX’s approach is always neutral, independent and results driven. Our reach is global, cross-asset class and across the range of industry participants.
To find out more or to get involved, please contact us.
See also details of past and current regulatory responses.
Current Initiatives
Equities Consolidated Tape WG
Fixed Income Consolidated Tape WG
Derivatives Consolidated Tape WG
The introduction of consolidated tapes is a key regulatory initiative in Europe, being part of current MiFID II/ MiFIR reforms, as well as the UK, where it falls under the UK Wholesale Markets Review. FIX supports the data requirements of both EU and UK regulators and its own working groups. FIX’s goal is to support the flow of data between industry participants and thereby to contribute to the efficient implementation of consolidated tapes. A consequence of this work is that FIX has been adopted by all current consolidated tape providers (UK and EU, bonds and equities).
This is not the end of the story, with all three of FIX's Consolidated Tape Working Groups covering important points:
- Though the design work for EU equities is complete and adopted by the selected tape provider, the FCA is yet to publish its requirements for the UK equity tape. These are anticipated during the summer and the group will then work on assessing these requirements and factoring them into the FIX Protocol and supporting documentation.
- For bonds, the focus is on understanding the tape, documenting a range of trading scenarios and mapping those onto trade flags. The objective is to guide the industry towards a clear and common understanding of addressable liquidity.
- Finally, derivatives, being the last of all three planned to go live in both jurisdictions. Similar to bonds, work is focused on trade scenario analysis and implications for tape design.
The European Commission's MISP package includes several proposals for extensions to the EU equities tape and the equities working group is currently assessing these and will be communicating feedback to the Commission. The group is also currently working on a response to ESMA's call for evidence on European market structure.
Global Technical Committee
Our technical standards team are supporting ESMA and the ISO 20022 secretariat in the process to introduce CT support to ISO 20022 (business justification and message definition reports). This includes two pieces of work to ensure interoperability between the new ISO 20022 messages and established protocols, including FIX:
- Documenting mappings from the relevant tables in RTS 1 and RTS 2 to both the FIX Protocol and the new ISO 20022 messages.
- Working within the ISO 20022 structure to extend ISO 20022 to support Orchestra (and, by extension, any standards that can be represented in Orchestra including, but not limited to, the FIX Protocol) as an official syntax (message encoding structure) of ISO 20022.
Outage Communications WG
Outages (including, but not limited to, those of trading venues) are a critical focus area, where FIX is working together with the industry to map effective communication workflows during an outage at a venue or indeed any counterparty or element of financial markets infrastructure.
FIX has defined a list of fields and standards for the communication of outages and message workflows not just from the entity experiencing the outage, but between any interested parties (e.g., clients of brokers connected to a venue). This has been turned into a recommended practices document to the industry, in line with regulatory guidelines, along with a set of FIX Protocol extensions for outage communication. Two ongoing pieces of work remain, both covered by this working group:
- Educating the industry on the work done so far.
- Documenting worked examples for realistic outage scenarios.
Additional FIX Topics
FIX undertakes regular reviews of regulatory and market structure changes, supplemented by requests and ideas from our members. In addition to the areas covered above, FIX has been and will continue to be involved in topics including regulatory reporting, governance, and regulations relating to operational resilience (including DORA) and digital assets (including MICA).
