Why Standards Matter: Building a Consolidated Tape That Truly Serves the Market

Why Standards Matter: Building a Consolidated Tape That Truly Serves the Market

As work progresses on the UK bond Consolidated Tape, one of the most important design decisions we face is not about technology in the abstract, but about how the market connects to this new piece of public infrastructure.

Connectivity choices shape cost, behaviour and trust. They influence whether a consolidated tape functions as a neutral market utility or or introduces unnecessary complexity for market participants. For that reason, we have taken a clear and deliberate decision: the UK bond Consolidated Tape will operate exclusively through a single, open-source, standards-based API, developed in partnership with the FIX Trading Community.

This is not a philosophical position. It is a practical one, grounded in years of experience operating market infrastructures and listening to users.

The case for a single, standards-based interface

• Minimises integration cost for contributors and users
• Creates a level playing field, where all participants interact with the tape in the same way
• Encourages interoperability, reuse and long-term resilience
• Reduces dependency on any single vendor’s proprietary technology

In the context of a consolidated tape — which is intended to serve the market as a whole — these properties are not optional. They are foundational.

Why “optional” proprietary APIs are rarely neutral in practice

Some market infrastructures choose to offer an open standard alongside an optional proprietary API. While this may appear to provide flexibility, experience suggests that such models introduce structural risks that are difficult to manage over time.

1. The risk of de-facto primacy

Even when a proprietary API is described as “optional”, market dynamics often lead it to become the primary interface — perceived as more capable, more performant, or more closely aligned with the operator’s own roadmap.

Once that happens, the standard interface risks becoming secondary, regardless of original intent.

2. Non-discrimination becomes harder to evidence

Operating two APIs in parallel raises legitimate questions:

• Are latency, throughput and resiliency genuinely identical?
• Are incidents handled and prioritised in the same way?
• Are enhancements released simultaneously?

Even with strong governance, proving equivalence across two distinct technical stacks is non-trivial — particularly for a regulated utility where confidence and auditability matter.

3. Documentation and support asymmetry

Over time, proprietary interfaces often receive:

• richer documentation,
• earlier previews of changes, or
• more direct engineering support.

This does not require bad intent. It is simply the natural outcome when one interface is owned and controlled by the same organisation that operates the infrastructure.

For a consolidated tape, however, perception matters as much as reality.

4. Conflicts of interest are harder to manage

Where the tape operator also offers commercial data services, a proprietary API creates an inherent tension: the operator is simultaneously the gatekeeper and a technology vendor.

Even if carefully managed, this can create avoidable questions around incentives, roadmap prioritisation and neutrality — questions that a public-interest utility should not need to answer.

Standards also provide durable governance

An additional advantage of a standards-based API is the governance framework that sits around it. Open standards such as FIX evolve through transparent, industry-led processes, with proposed changes subject to consultation, documentation and consensus. This provides market participants with clarity and predictability around how interfaces may change over time.

By contrast, proprietary APIs are ultimately governed by the commercial priorities of a single provider. While change may be well-intentioned, it can be harder for users to anticipate, influence or challenge. For a piece of market infrastructure intended to operate for many years, robust change governance is as important as the initial technical design.

A standards-based model ensures that future enhancements are introduced in a controlled, transparent and inclusive manner — reinforcing confidence that the consolidated tape will remain stable, interoperable and aligned with market needs over the long term.

Why we chose a different path

By committing to work with the FIX Trading Community to create a single, open, standards-based API, we remove these issues at source.

• There is no hierarchy of interfaces.
• There is no ambiguity about which API the market should build to.
• There is no need to demonstrate parity across multiple technical paths.

Everyone — contributors, vendors, end users, and our own commercial services — connects in exactly the same way, using the same specification, governed by the same open process.

That clarity reduces cost, simplifies oversight, and reinforces the principle that the consolidated tape is a neutral market infrastructure, not a platform for product differentiation.

Looking ahead

The UK bond Consolidated Tape represents a rare opportunity to reset expectations around transparency infrastructure. Design choices made now will shape market behaviour for years to come.

Our view is simple: neutral infrastructure works best when it is simple, open and standardised. That is the approach we are taking, and we believe it best serves contributors, users and the wider market.