The JSE is committed to pursuing innovative and cost-effective solutions that create an enabling environment for market participants. Therefore, in March it announced the launch of its new order routing service, JSE-FIX, in collaboration with Rapid Addition, a leader in the development of advanced electronic trading technology as well as a provider of financial messaging protocols and high-performance middleware to support electronic trading and connectivity. JSE-FIX aims to reduce the cost of sending orders by providing market participants with a scalable solution that is vendor, venue and asset class agnostic.
The JSE will utilise Rapid Addition’s trading platform technology for this new service, providing efficient counterparty connectivity for domestic and international asset managers. JSE member firms will be able to receive orders and send trade confirmations electronically, while integrating seamlessly with their execution management processes. JSE-FIX aims to address cost pressures and reduce the complexity of managing multiple connections for clients.
With this new solution, the JSE aims to provide a competitive and appealing offering to clients, making it easier for new asset managers to access the market and ultimately grow liquidity by scaling global FIX application programming interface (API) standards.
JSE-FIX is another addition to the JSE’s already expansive suite of products and services. In 2023, for instance, the exchange introduced its low-latency Infrastructure as a Service colocation service, Colo 2.0, an extension of the bourse’s colocation offering that enables faster access to all its markets. Behind Colo 2.0 is an international tech collaboration, where the JSE partnered with IPC and Beeks, both of which are international vendors in the connectivity and infrastructure space.
Colo 2.0 has also facilitated greater access to the JSE’s trading platforms for local and international participants, and the JSE ensures it remains competitive with similar offerings from other global exchanges and financial service providers.
Nasheen Sharma, Technical Account Manager at the JSE, says JSE-FIX is a key initiative to lower all-in costs for trading for clients and also open up new opportunities for technology providers/software vendors ‘to now play in this space. It also supported the JSE’s strategic view to grow non-trading revenue, and this service further enhances our market access options by giving clients more options and opportunities to access our market’.
FIX, which stands for financial information exchange, is a global API language used by buy and sell side participants to access liquidity. Enabling a global API standard lowers barriers to entry and costs for local and international clients to access JSE markets.
Sharma says JSE-FIX compares extremely favourably to existing order routing solutions in terms of cost savings and efficiency.
‘We used a provider that has global-FIX provider awards. Our solution lowered costs by allowing flexible connectivity options, being venue and market agnostic. This truly provides economies of scale to clients. The solution is fully redundant and is a high availability solution, with multiple connectivity parts. In terms of scalability, we will be launching a service within our colocation environment, thus speaking to the scalability and speed element.’
He says he anticipates that JSE-FIX will have a positive impact on market liquidity and trading volumes on the exchange.
‘Part of the reason for us choosing to collaborate with Rapid Addition was due to their existing connectivity to international networks, thus opening up opportunities for new trading clients.’
Initial response from institutional investors, brokers and other market participants has been faster than anticipated, with around six technology providers coming forward and about four brokers working with the exchange to access the service, according to Sharma.
