The Financial Information Services Division (FISD) provides a balanced and neutral business forum for exchanges, market data vendors, specialist data providers, brokerage firms and banks to address and resolve business and technical issues related to the distribution, management, administration and use of financial information.

Over 130 organizations, representing all segments of the information distribution chain, are active members of FISD. They use the forum to exchange ideas, build business relationships, establish new levels of mutual understanding and improve the business climate associated with the worldwide flow of financial information. Participants are responsible for their own strategic and commercial interests within FISD. Our role is to act as a neutral facilitator of the discussion and as manager of the consensus agenda that emerges as a result.
 

Market Data Contracts
The market data contract is the principle document governing what vendors, redistributors and subscribers can and cannot do with the data. To help make contractual discussions  more efficient, FISD members have developed, published and continued to evolve an Exchange Contract Guide (ECG) providing a common legal and commercial framework as the starting point for contract negotiations among exchanges, vendors and client firms. Other contractual areas within FISD include the development of consistent unit of count definitions, procedures for effective change management, guidelines for audits and procedures related to authorization and permissioning.

Billing and Reporting
FISD is managing the industry-wide objective of billing and reporting efficiency. Our efforts focus on both procurement and payment processing and include: simplification of reporting requirements, managing the XML standard for billing and reporting, promotion of a common data set among all parties in the information distribution chain and other activities associated with better inventory management and automated invoice reconciliation.

Market Data Business Policy
FISD’s market data policies project is designed to promote the development of transparent, consistent and rational policies governing the management, distribution and use of market data. The overall goals of the activity are to ensure that vendors and redistributors understand and can comply with contractual obligations as well as to assist information providers in the creation of policies that promote business efficiency in the face of evolving technological environments.

 

Market Data Definition Language (MDDL)
FISD was selected by the industry to manage the development of Market Data Definition Language -- a generic XML-based interchange format on the fields needed to describe instruments, corporate events and market-related indicators. The overall objective is to promote data interoperability and allow users to integrate data from multiple sources. And while the initial application is end-of-day and snapshot data, MDDL is extensible into streaming and interpreted data applications as appropriate.

Security Identification/ISIN
FISD is helping to manage the market data issues related to the automated processing of securities transactions from point-of-trade to point-of-settlement. FISD activities focus on the relationship between ISIN and STP, the requirements for unique instrument identification, assignment issues and the problems related to ISIN maintenance and the commercial structure of the license and distribution agreements. Documents related to security identification are available on the Security Identification web page.

Symbology and Reference Data
FISD has been conducting an open inquiry into the requirements for unique security and business entity identification to help meet the objectives of automation, cost-mitigation and reduction of trade failures in STP environments. The outcome of the investigation has been accepted by the global market data industry and is now moving into implementation phase.

Closing Price Project
The objective of the closing price project is transparency and full disclosure of approach on how closing price is created, calculated and amended for all equity exchanges on a global basis. The goal is to define all the attributes of closing price in a consistent manner, describe the local pricing conventions used for portfolio valuation and identify any special characteristics used in computing value. The FISD closing price database is available online.

SEC Market Data Advisory Committee
FISD is a member of the SEC Market Information Advisory Committee in discussions on a broad range of issues related to market data. Included in the debate is the concept of the national market system (NMS), the definition of transparency and "core data" and issues relating to the cost, management and public availability of market data. Documents, transcripts and FISD analyses are available on FISD's SEC/Regulation web page.

FISD has earned the trust of the industry participants as a neutral business forum and effective facilitator on a wide spectrum of issues affecting the global market data industry. FISD’s objective is to promote understanding of complex issues among all segments of the market data business as well as among other groups and international regulatory bodies. Coordinating among the market data industry and promoting business relationships is one of FISD’s primary functions. We do this through a combination of meetings, networking events and working sessions.