Islamic Financial Data Standard
TradeHeader as specialists in the use and personalization of key data standards within the financial services industry, we have participated in the project to define an Islamic Financial Data Standard
Goals
- To create a data standard for electronic dealing and processing of islamic financial products.
- It will establish the industry protocol for sharing information on, and dealing in, Shariah compliant products.
- Leveraging existing islamic legal standards defined by industry associations such as IIFM and ISDA.
- Leveraging existing financial electronic standards, e.g. FpML, CDM.
- Other syntaxes may be generated from the data model (e.g. JSON).
Requirements
- Descriptive: the format should be able to capture the data and its relationships as richly as it can.
- Flexible: the format should be flexible enough to accommodate new types of information and process requirements.
- Following latest state of the art on the industry.
- Platform-neutral: the message format should not be tied to any vendor product or platform; that is, disparate systems and programming languages should be able to receive and process data in the message.
- Fast: data must be transported in a structured format that is easy to parse and process, especially given the high-speed requirements of electronic and algorithmic trading these days.
Important Points
- Development of the Islamic Financial Data Standard is developed under a functional perspective.
- It covers data and processes.
- It covers issuance of products and all the trade lifecycle.
Initial Scope
- Sukuk issuance.
- Sukuk transactions.
- Islamic derivatives transactions:
- IFX Forwards
- Islamic Cross Currency Swaps
- Profit Rate Swaps
- Input from standardized IIFM/ISDA confirmation templates, Shariah scholars, and market participants.
Business analysis process
- Understand the mechanics of the product.
- Document listing all fields that need to be covered:
- Products & Events
- Description of each field and an example value.
- Information on whether each field can be repeated and whether it is required or optional.
- Information on values that are defined as lists:
- Allowed values and the description of each value
- Source System Sample Messages covering multiple product/business event variations.
