Representing currency pairs in an fdc3.instrument Context

[Kristopher West]

Hi All,

At a previous meeting, I/we were asked to raise an issue to standardize how currency pairs are represented in an fdc3.instrument. These are poorly served by the current instrument type and several of the maintainers have observed firms choosing deliberately odd locations or labels to insert the data as they don't wish to conflict with an eventual standard, but need at least an interim solution. Hence, we need to create that standard.

I've documented the issue and a proposal at: https://github.com/finos/FDC3/issues/1291.

The issue proposes to add a CURRENCY_PAIR key to the instrument's id property (as we do for other standardized identifiers such as ISIN or CUSIP), which should adopt the format <sold currency code>/<bought currency code>, e.g. "GBP/USD".  

However, currency pairs are really a convention rather than a standard (although the currency codes they are made up of are backed by ISO 4217) and (to the best of my knowledge) there is some variation on whether to include the / or not.

We resolved at today's meeting to invite the community to share its collective wisdom on this topic and to request comments on the above issue to refine or support the proposal. Hence, if you know something about currency codes, please pop over to  https://github.com/finos/FDC3/issues/1291 and let us know.

K

	Kris West
	Director, Consulting Services +44 7715104292 kris...@interop.io