FINOS, the Fintech Open Source Foundation and financial services umbrella of the Linux Foundation, announced its 2022 annual results, “highlighting the growth of the open source movement within the financial services industry, along with their 2023 strategic initiatives.”
Led by the more than 2,100 contributors working on FINOS projects and a 20% increase in new corporate members, FINOS claims it “experienced unprecedented growth in 2022.”
In total, FINOS now “has 68 members leveraging its open source collaboration forum, including the most recent additions of Wellington Management, American Express, and Google Cloud, along with 8 more fintech and financial services organizations this past year.”
Gabriele Columbro, Executive Director of FINOS, said:
“Last year we reached a critical mass of more than 60 members across the globe, we hosted an ever more mature landscape of 50+ projects being used in production across the industry and most importantly, like measured in our 2022 report, the industry itself has accelerated the pace at which they adopt, contribute, and invest in open source strategically. So in 2023, we plan to unleash the ultimate power of the open collaboration model to solve some of the most pressing collective challenges in financial services and innovate financial technology for good.”
The financial services industry also “saw huge growth in open source.”
According to FINOS’ second annual State of Open Source In Financial Services survey, the industry “experienced significant positive momentum.”
Financial services is “making more commits (up 43% over 2021), enabling more contributions (up 75%), and is more openly encouraging consumption (up 78%).”
The industry overwhelmingly (87% of respondents) “recognizes the value of open source for the future of financial services and it is clear that OSPOs (Open Source Program Offices) help make it all happen.”
2022 KEY MILESTONES FOR FINOS
FINOS held its annual Open Source in Finance Forum (OSFF) in London and New York, which gathered “more than 900 open source and financial services industry and community leaders. OSFF NY saw a diverse cast of attendees, representing 254 different organizations from 17 countries.”
Financial services was “the most represented industry, totaling 53% of attending organizations, and featuring more than 50 keynote and breakout sessions.”
The New York event was “the first time FINOS hosted a Project Expo at one of their Open Source in Finance Forums.”
Community members “showcased real life implementations of FINOS projects to solve specific business challenges, including demos of FDC3, TimeBase CE, Symphony WDK, and CDM.”
In September, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA), and the International Securities Lending Association (ISLA) “chose FINOS as a repository for their Common Domain Model (CDM), which establishes a single digital representation of financial transactions and events.”
FINOS will “oversee maintenance of the code, the growth of community around contribution, and development of the CDM and assisting in building awareness.”
In a breakout session at OSFF in New York, ISDA discussed “the challenges faced in the derivatives market and how the Common Domain Model (CDM) can make regulation easier by providing a standard data model.”
Updates on the CDM and the progress “made by FINOS, ISDA, ICMA, and ISLA are expected throughout 2023.’
The FDC3 desktop interoperability standards project, “hosted by FINOS, continued to grow in 2022, with more developments on the horizon for 2023.”
At the recent OSFF New York conference, Dov Katz talked “about how NPM downloads of the project had increased by over 2000% during 2022 and FINOS announced the first results of its conformance program.”
Maintainers of three FDC3 Desktop Agents from Tick42, Finsemble, and FINOS’ own FDC3-Sail came on stage “to collect their awards for conformance.”
The same event “saw presentations in several major FDC3 projects: Nick Kolba (Connectifi) and Seb Ben M’Barek (Norman and Sons) presented FDC3-Sail and showed how it used FINOS’ FDC3 App Directory, Aaron Haines (Natwest Markets) and Tiago Pina (Cosaic) presented the newly-contributed Backplane project, and Michael Lynch (Symphony) and Leslie Spiro (Tick42) showed how their products interoperate over FDC3 to solve real-life use-cases.”
With more than 68 members “across the financial services ecosystem, FINOS garnered the attention of buy-side organizations such as Wellington Management, who joined as a Platinum member, and Point72, a Silver member.”
FINOS also “welcomed Google Cloud, Société Générale, American Express, Mirantis, The Digital Dollar Project, REGnosys, Blockchain Technology Partners, ControlPlane, Luxoft,”
The RegTech Association, PeerNova, and Mifos to its foundation; “executing increased open source adoption across a multitude of key industries throughout the ecosystem.”
As 2023 is underway, the FINOS team “looks forward to continuing this momentum into the New Year and can expect further developments in strategic initiatives across the FINOS ecosystem.”
Each strategic initiative is sponsored by senior executives who “are FINOS members and Board representatives, underlining the business criticality of each of these efforts.”
As the financial sector evolves, open source participation and utilization “have emerged as a key competitive differentiator for both FINOS members and non-members alike.”
Understanding that each financial services organization is at a unique stage of open source maturity, FINOS seeks “to further drive open source readiness (OSR) and establish an open source maturity model (OSMM) to privately assess the level of open source adoption within each member organization.”
With a focus on accelerating OSR, FINOS is “doubling down in 2023 with several initiatives, including formalizing the OSR process and defining a clear OSMM, developing a comprehensive body of knowledge and evaluation criteria, and positioning FINOS OSR as a standout advantage for fintech and FINOS members.”
At FINOS, they are “convinced that open source software and standards have the potential to revolutionize the way financial regulation is enforced and monitored.”
This belief inspired us “to launch the Open RegTech Initiative, aimed at fostering open collaboration between financial institutions, technology companies, service providers, and regulators.”
Within Open RegTech In 2023, FINOS will “embark on a journey of collaboration and awareness, embedding projects such as LCR, CDM, TRAC, Horizon Scanning, etc. into the Open RegTech framework, soliciting and developing new RegTech-focused projects to expand the initiative’s impact, and aligning existing FINOS projects with the RegTech Special Interest Group (SIG) to gather and implement requirements and use cases.”
In the realm of financial desktop applications, seamless interoperability is “the driving force behind the Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium (FDC3).”
With the aim of “enabling plug-and-play functionality without the need for prior agreements, FDC3 has set out to create open standards that advance the ability of applications in financial workflows to work together.”
This includes “a standardized format for context data, standardized verbs to invoke actions between applications (intents), a REST-based App Directory standard, and standardized API operations for a Desktop Agent.”
In 2023, FINOS is doubling down “on the mission of FDC3 with the focus on App Interoperability.”
With the goal of consolidating FDC3 as the de-facto standard for desktop application communication in finance, FINOS will “continue the progress made in 2022 with the FDC3 Directory and Conformance Compliance Program, expand the reach of FINOS with more consumers, contributors, and projects, and increase the adoption of FDC3 through various onboarding initiatives such as hackathons, webinars, training, in-person workshops, and online certifications.”