FinXML: Financial XML
Focus: Capital Markets Instruments & Straight Through Processing
DTD or Schema: Available here.
Website: www.finxml.org
Contact: info@finxml.org
Founding & Key Members: FinXML was founded by software company Integral Development Corp., which has not made its membership list available.
Organization: FinXML has an executive committee, which is made up of member financial and technology institutions that are active in the use of FinXML, and is responsible for setting the overall direction and goals of the group.
The Executive Committee is supported by an Advisory Committee made up of all Executive and Associate member organizations, which votes on standards submitted to the consortium and additions and changes to existing standards.
Membership is available in three levels. Executive membership is limited to financial services institutions and technology providers. Associate membership is open to all organizations interested in using FinXML or building products and services around FinXML. Affiliate membership is open to individuals, educational institutions and government organizations.
Background: FinXML was developed by Integral Development Corp., a vendor of e-commerce software for capital markets, and is supported by firms including Chase Manhattan and Sun Microsystems. Its goal is to provide ‘the first common denominator’ enabling cross-system interoperability in capital markets using XML.
As such, FinXML claims to be interoperable with existing financial protocols, such as FIX and Swift, as well as Microsoft’s BizTalk and Ariba’s cXML, which support e-commerce and EDI.
By enabling financial institutions to communicate the details of highly structured financial transactions electronically, FinXML is positioning itself to be used as a basis for straight through processing and risk management, as well as Internet-based e-commerce. With such positioning, FinXML appears to overlap with efforts to develop STPML and FIXML.
FinXML supports a variety of financial products including interest rate, foreign exchange and commodity derivatives, bonds, money markets, loans and deposits, and exchange traded futures and options.
Current vocabularies defined as part of FinXML are based on International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) standards. They support a set of elements and attributes that represent financial transactions, reference data, market data, payments, settlements and confirmations.
The protocol was originally used in CFOWeb, a trading exchange that was created by Integral but it now seems to have disappeared. FinXML will be used internally by Atriax, the electronic marketplace for foreign exchange products, which is utilizing Integral's technology. Its public interfaces, however, will utilize FpML.