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16 February 2023
UK,
Reporter Bob Currie

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CDM resources now available as open source in FINOS

Common Domain Model (CDM) resources are now available as open source via the FINOS repository.

In May 2022, the three industry associations which have collaborated to deliver the CDM project — namely the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), the International Securities Lending Association (ISLA) and the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) — issued a tender to meet the requirements of providing a repository for the open-source CDM, which establishes a single, common digital representation of trade events and actions across the lifecycle of financial products.

The requirements included maintenance of the CDM code, facilitating the growth of a community to contribute to the development of the CDM, and allowing for governance of the contributions to be overseen by the associations.

On the basis of this request for quotation and selection process, FINOS was appointed in September 2022 to provide this repository service, enabling users to access CDM resources as open source.

In a joint statement, ICMA, ISDA and ISLA announced today that the CDM is now available in FINOS under the FINOS Community Specification License 1.0. Further details are available via the FINOS Common Domain Model web page or via the github.

ISDA chief executive Scott O’Malia says: “The launch of the FINOS project represents an exciting new chapter and will bring together a broad community of financial market participants to adopt and further expand the open-source CDM.

“This will ensure greater consistency and standardisation in how derivatives, bonds and securities finance transactions are reported, managed and processed through the lifecycle, increasing interoperability and efficiency and reducing costs.”

ISLA CEO Andrew Dyson adds: “Today represents the culmination of a lot of collaboration between the associations and FINOS. Placing the CDM within the FINOS community marks a watershed moment in the development of standards for the industry.

“Strategically, the open-source methodology should breed faster convergence, facilitate quick adaptation to future changes to capital markets requirements and attract a wider user base.”

Bryan Pascoe, chief executive of ICMA, comments: “Today’s launch coincides with the completion of ICMA’s CDM project for repo and bonds. At a time of accelerating digital transformation, regulatory change, cost pressure and an increased risk of fragmentation, the FINOS open-source framework will be critical to facilitate adoption and promote interoperability across capital markets.”

FINOS was established to provide a forum for non-competitive open collaboration between the participants in the financial services industry. In pushing this objective, it aims to offer both the open-source tools and the community of users that will propel the development and adoption of the CDM.

In 2020, FINOS staged a pilot programme for submitting changes to the CDM model using Legend, its open data modelling collaboration platform developed initially by Goldman Sachs in collaboration with FINOS and a number of other large global investment banks.

In addition, the FINOS Financial Objects Special Interest Group (FO SIG), led by Goldman Sachs and ISDA, provides a forum for collaboration on data modelling for a range of business use cases, for example carbon credits for energy projects and data lineage of digital assets.

“We have a successful track record of model development using Legend at FINOS and we are fully committed to establishing an operating model that incorporates both Legend and Rosetta [a language and tool set developed by REGnosys] in the CDM modelling process,” says Ian Sloyan, ISDA’s Senior Advisor, Data and Digital Solutions and a Co-Lead of the FO SIG.

At a recent Open Source in Finance Forum in New York, ISDA released its Digital Regulatory Reporting (DRR) live in production with one of its association members using code developed using the CDM to meet regulatory reporting obligations under the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC’s) revised swap data reporting rules.

“Seeing a highly competitive industry like financial services coming together to embrace the open source development model for something as transformational as the CDM is a pivotal moment for our Community,” said Gabriele Columbro, executive director at FINOS and general manager of Linux Foundation Europe.

“Open source collaboration goes way beyond code and the contribution of the CDM is a testament to the relentless work of our contributors that paved the way for the creation of a truly open data ecosystem for this industry.”

The FINOS CDM Contribution Review Working Group will commence its activities from 14 March 2023.

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