FIA Tech aims to be 'one-stop-shop for reference data'

The former technology arm of trade body FIA has said it plans to become the “one-stop-shop for reference data” six months after securing $44m of funding from ten investment banks.

Andrew Castello, head of reference data at FIA Tech, said banks, brokers and traders are increasingly facing the same issues around cleaning and normalising reference data, and they are looking to the tech firm to solve these problems for them.

Castello said: “One thing that is clear in our discussions with clients is that they want a one-stop shop for reference data. When you’re working at a firm that uses many different reference data vendors, there is naturally a lot of overlap in the data so firms have back office and operational inefficiencies.”

Washington-based Castello, who joined FIA Tech in 2019 from UBS where he was a settlements manager, said the plan is to work with the various reference data vendors and their common clients “to create a standardised network for product and entity reference data”.

“We think about it in terms of core reference data, so that is the products themselves, and the second part is what happens to that product from the day it is listed to the day it is delisted.

"Firms have come to us and said we like your approach on position limits and exchange fees, so we have just widened our scope,” Castello said.

FIA Tech, which secured in June $44m (£31m) of funding from ten of its largest clients, said some early reference data successes include its work on vendor symbologies and contract specifications.

Castello said: “Cross-reference symbology is a recurring theme. We see it in brokerage settlement and we see it in our own internal systems, where clients send in different vendor symbologies. We have to deal with that but our clients also have to deal with that on a daily basis.”

“Another issue is standardising contract specifications. There are APIs from different exchanges that have different attributes and field names, so we have taken all of those and created a standard around that, so whatever exchange you are talking to, you know what field you are looking for,” Castello added.

FIA Tech said at the end of November it had launched a new service to help US trading firms navigate regulations governing the trading of non-US index derivatives.

FIA Tech was formerly a division of the futures trade body but the investment from the banks means the tech firm is now independent of the lobby group.