FDC3 ushers a new era of buy-side, sell-side connectivity as industry leaders surface adoption of the open standard in their financial desktop platforms

NEW YORK, US – September 30, 2024 - The Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), the financial services umbrella of the Linux Foundation, announced at today’s Open Source in Finance Forum New York (OSFF NY) that BlackRock’s Aladdin platform and Morgan Stanley’s Open Source ComposeUI have successfully achieved FDC3 2.0 Conformance, joining the growing list of FINOS FDC3 Certified Platforms. 

Additionally, during OSFF NY opening keynotes, FINOS showcased public statements from leading financial data and analytics vendors like London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and S&P Global Market Intelligence implementing the FDC3 protocol within customer-facing applications. These firms join the over 30 firms publicly listed as FDC3 standard users and the estimated thousands of internal applications built on the open standard.

FDC3 (Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium) is an open standard hosted by FINOS created in 2018 to address desktop application interoperability in financial services and rapidly evolved into a recognized cross-industry connectivity standard. 

"FDC3 has gained significant momentum, as evidenced by these new conformance and adoption results," said Madeleine Dassule, Partner and CIO Infrastructure Platform at Wellington Management, Chair of the FINOS Governing Board and FDC3 Executive Sponsor. "And we’re very excited to see innovations such as FDC3 for the Web, and FDC3 Identity and Security, being driven by the open source community."

"Having industry leaders like BlackRock and Morgan Stanley now certified by FINOS as  FDC3 2.0 Conformant is a major milestone as it will no doubt exponentially grow the network effect FDC3 is already experiencing," said Gabriele Columbro, Executive Director of FINOS. "Paired with adoption from leading financial data platforms, it’s hard to overstate what a watershed moment this is in breaking long-standing industry silos and vendor lock-in.”

A critical step forward in industry interoperability

The challenges and resource drain that financial services have faced for years when it comes to financial technology interoperability are being tackled head-on through a commitment to open standards. 

For BlackRock, the certification process, led by Sitija Sarkar, Tech Fellow, Managing Director and FINOS Board member, ensures that third-party vendor applications adhering to the FDC3 standard can seamlessly interact with Aladdin applications, regardless of the provider. This interoperability is crucial for streamlining workflows and improving productivity.

"At the heart of fintech innovation is the ability to seamlessly integrate diverse financial systems and open source accelerates this by promoting collaboration and transparency across the industry. BlackRock is proud to achieve FDC3 2.0 Conformance Certification for our Aladdin platform,” said Lance Braunstein, Senior Managing Director, Head of Aladdin Engineering. “FDC3 standards will ensure seamless interoperability and workflow efficiency, future-proofing the Aladdin ecosystem for faster, secure, and flexible client value delivery.”

For Morgan Stanley, Conformance demonstrates the strategic importance the firm places on FDC3. This year alone they have taken on co-maintainer responsibilities of the FDC3 standard and contributed .NET bindings, as well as contributing to FDC3 2.2. It’s important to note that the newly certified ComposeUI is itself an incubating Morgan Stanley open source project.

“Achieving FDC3 2.0 Conformance Certification is a significant milestone for Morgan Stanley and is a step in our journey to enable FDC3 interoperability across our portfolio of applications covering a range of programming languages and platforms," said Brian Ingenito, Executive Director and Distinguished Engineer at Morgan Stanley. "We believe that open standards like FDC3 are essential for unlocking new scenarios and efficiencies in user experience on the desktop for both our employees and our clients."

Morgan Stanley is actively engaged with a wide range of FINOS open source project communities alongside FDC3, including Common Cloud Controls, Open Source Readiness, AI Readiness, Architecture as Code, TraderX, BankerX, and Zenith.

Also at OSFF NY Morgan Stanley and Wellington Management demonstrated FDC3 cross-firm, highly confidential interoperability use cases, further broadening the reach and applicability of the standard.

FDC3 2.2 enables use cases beyond desktop, GenAI supercharges the standard 

The FDC3 community has also unveiled the newly adopted FDC3 2.2 specification which will be demonstrated at OSFF NY. Importantly, this includes a protocol allowing FDC3 applications to work in browsers in a standards-compliant way. This is particularly exciting as it opens up the possibility for FDC3 to be used beyond its original remit of the trader desktop to tackle a broader variety of finance and other use cases.

In conjunction with its open source nature enabling training of large language models free of IP concerns, FDC3 is solidly set to enable a high productivity development of a new generation of financial workflows based on seamless standard-based connectivity across the industry.

“Teaching Copilot FDC3 enables new and integrated workflows and future agentic capabilities with best-of-breed desktop apps” said Jared Lambert, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft”.

About FDC3

FDC3 (Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium) is an open standard for desktop application interoperability in financial services. By establishing a universal framework for desktop applications to communicate and share data, FDC3 allows users to integrate multiple tools and platforms in real time without the need for custom integrations. This standard accelerates workflow efficiency, reduces complexity, and fosters innovation, empowering firms to leverage their existing technology ecosystems to deliver faster, more cohesive financial insights and decision-making.  The 2.0 version of the standard introduced enhanced features for seamless integration and communication between different applications on financial desktops.

For more information about FDC3 and how to get involved, or to learn about joining FINOS as a member, visit fdc3.finos.org and the Member Benefits page. FINOS also encourages financial institutions and technology providers to pursue FDC3 certification to enhance sector-wide interoperability.

About FINOS

FINOS (The Fintech Open Source Foundation) is a nonprofit whose mission is to foster the adoption of open source, open standards, and collaborative software development practices in financial services. It is the center for open source developers and the financial services industry to build new technology projects that have a lasting impact on business operations. As a regulatory compliant platform, the foundation enables developers from these competing organizations to collaborate on projects with a strong propensity for mutualization. It has enabled codebase contributions from both the buy- and sell-side firms and counts over 50 major financial institutions, fintechs and technology consultancies as part of its membership. FINOS is also part of the Linux Foundation, the largest shared technology organization in the world. Get involved and join FINOS as a Member.

Media Contact:

Olivia McCormick

Stanton Communications, Inc

omccormick@stantoncomm.com

+1 (215) 287-6337

Patrick Doherty

FINOS

patrick.doherty@finos.org

+1 (206) 245 8574