An initiative to establish universal connectivity and standards across the financial industry’s desktop applications has received support from a number of cross-industry financial institutions.
The Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium (FDC3) is led by OpenFin, a provider of application-agnostic operating systems created specifically for finance, which has contributed the source-code to serve as the foundation of the initiative.
Members of the FDC3 include Algomi, AllianceBernstein, Barclays, BGC Partners, BNP Paribas, Citadel, FactSet, Fidessa, IHS Markit, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, OpenDoor, OTAS Technologies, RBC, RSRCHXchange, Trumid, TP ICAP, and others.
The FDC3 aims to solve problems related to inter-system connectivity where end-users at banks and hedge funds use a combination of in-house and vendor applications, resulting in impeded productivity and increased operational risk.
Mazy Dar, CEO of OpenFin, commented: “Today, the humans sitting at desktops are the integration layer between their applications. We believe the time has come to enable financial desktops with the same app interoperability that we take for granted on our iOS and Android devices.”
OpenFin is open-sourcing its desktop connectivity technology as part of the initiative and providing a central app directory which will be freely accessible and allow applications to identify one another safely and securely.
“Our Corporate and Investment Banking staff can use anywhere between 5-15 applications in their daily workflow”, said Jim Adams, managing director, CIB Technology at J.P. Morgan. “Interoperability would allow this workflow to become seamless across applications and platforms, ultimately making our employees more productive and informed when talking to internal and external clients.”
In February last year, OpenFin raised $15 million in Series B funding led by J.P. Morgan, Bain Capital Ventures, and Euclid Opportunities, the venture funding arm of the NEX Groupm, as well as Venture capital firms Nyca Partners, Pivot Investment Partners, and DRW Venture Capital.