Citi partners with NSE to launch Financial Information Exchange protocol

Citigroup Global Markets today announced that it is the first brokerage house in India to launch the next generation industry-driven messaging standard - Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol adopted by the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE).

“Citi is proud to bring the next generation of messaging standard to India in collaboration with NSE,” said Kumar Goradia, Head of India Equity Technology at Citi.

“FIX capitalizes on Citi’s state-of-the-art technology and extensive global trading expertise. It is designed to improve the efficiency of India’s equity markets while bringing together our global capabilities under a single platform, “Goradia added.

In a press release Citigroup said that it has extensively tested the internationally recogniSed standard FIX for the last six months in collaboration with NSE, the first exchange to implement this protocol in India. The platform offers cutting edge execution to use the protocol to transact in an electronic, transparent, cost efficient and timely manner.

Vidhu Shekhar, Vice President, New Products, National Stock Exchange (NSE) said, “Support for FIX is an important part of NSE’s efforts to improve throughput and efficiency of pre-trade message processing. We expect the use of FIX messages to become widespread in all market segments. We congratulate Citi on being the first to go live with FIX in India.”

With the successful implementation of this standard, Citigroup Global Markets can now deploy new trading technologies in India for its institutional trading clients quicker and at lower costs.

Indian exchanges introduced electronic trading around 15 years ago using proprietary data standards for interfacing with broker trading systems. NSE calls its native protocol Computer to Computer Link (CTCL). Recognizing industry needs and at the behest of global brokerages such as Citigroup, NSE commenced development of a FIX API as an alternative to the native CTCL.