The State of FDC3: Insights from NatWest, FINOS, and the Community

At the London Client Forum, Rob Moffat (FINOS) moderated an FDC3 panel that included Kris West (Lead Maintainer of FDC3), Matt Harvey (Global Head of Electronic Sales, NatWest), and Nick Head (Lead Software Engineer, T. Rowe Price).

The conversation offered a behind-the-scenes look at how FDC3 is evolving — from its conception in 2017 to its growing role in enabling seamless interoperability between sell-side and buy-side platforms, client desktops, and vendor apps.

Here’s what we learned.

From APIs to an Industry-Wide Language

FDC3 began as a response to fragmentation. Banks and vendors were all building their own APIs to connect financial desktop applications, but without a shared framework, adoption remained siloed. As Kris West explained, FDC3 emerged from this need for a common language — a set of open standards that any application could adopt to communicate and interoperate with others, regardless of technology stack or provider.

“FDC3 itself is an attempt to bring people together as an industry to work on how they talk to each other…You only create languages by agreeing what the different bits mean.”
— Kris West, Lead Maintainer, FDC3

Today, FDC3 includes standards for:

• Context and Intents: so applications can share structured data and take action.
• App Directory: to define and discover available apps.
• APIs: to invoke interoperability in a consistent way across platforms.

How NatWest Uses FDC3 to Break Down the Monolith

Matt Harvey described how FDC3 is helping NatWest serve clients more flexibly. Rather than delivering functionality through a single-dealer platform that clients must adopt wholesale, FDC3 enables them to break up functionality into components and embed them into client workflows — in a non-proprietary, low-friction way.

“We’re focused on delivering components that slot into client workflows with low friction — FDC3 gives us the optionality to do that.”
— Matt Harvey, Global Head of Electronic Sales, NatWest

In practice, that means clients don’t need to install a full container or compromise their existing workflow. NatWest can bring together specific functions — like indicative pricing, market views, or analytics — that live seamlessly within the client’s desktop environment.

What It Means for the Buy Side

While much of FDC3’s early adoption came from sell-side institutions, firms like T. Rowe Price are now putting it to work across their front-office stack. During the panel, T. Rowe’s experience highlighted how the buy side is using FDC3 to accelerate delivery, simplify vendor integration, and give traders more control over what they see — and what they don’t.

Instead of building or adopting full-scale platforms, T. Rowe is focused on lightweight, widget-based apps that can be delivered incrementally. Thanks to FDC3’s common standards, onboarding new components — whether from internal teams or external vendors — can now happen rapidly.

This approach also respects the reality of the trading floor: screen real estate is precious, and FDC3 enables only the most relevant apps and data points to appear where they’re needed. With SSO support and adherence to shared context standards, each component integrates into the broader workflow while maintaining security and consistency.

Identity and SSO: The Next Frontier

As FDC3 adoption grows, so do the demands. One of the most urgent areas of focus is identity management — enabling applications to know who they’re talking to and whether they’re authorized, without creating workflow bottlenecks.

“The big topic of conversation at the moment is identity management — apps being able to identify each other and users in an easy way. One of the first questions people ask is, ‘Do you have FDC3 and SSO?’ And SSO is hard in finance.”
— Kris West

Matt noted that identity doesn’t have to be all or nothing. In many cases, a lightweight validation — such as knowing a user is part of a trusted firm via Symphony — may be enough to allow access to non-sensitive data, like commentary or indicative rates. This approach avoids unnecessary hurdles while preserving compliance.

“We need to avoid creating a brilliantly interoperable experience that still breaks down because the user hits a process wall. There’s a spectrum — and basic identity management can unlock meaningful parts of the workflow.”
— Matt Harvey

The Role of Open Source and the FDC3 Community

As Rob Moffatt of FINOS pointed out, FDC3 is a uniquely open-source success story. It brings together technologists, product leaders, and standards contributors from across the industry — and its strength lies in that collaboration.

“Even if you can’t contribute code, sharing use cases and workflow needs helps shape the standard. That’s what makes FDC3 work.”
— Rob Moffatt, FINOS

If your firm wants to get involved but isn’t sure where to start, interop.io and FINOS make it easy. From documentation to working groups to real-world implementations, there are many ways to participate. Check out our FDC3 Developer Sandbox to get started!

Conclusion: FDC3 Is Hitting Its Stride

This panel made it clear that FDC3 is a living standard — one that’s helping real firms deliver modular apps, reduce onboarding time, and simplify the desktop. And with identity, browser support, and more vendor adoption on the roadmap, it’s poised to take on even bigger challenges. Additionally, FDC3 for the web is here.