Building a Modern Fixed-Income Trading Experience with interop.io

Overview

A fast-growing fintech developing a next-generation fixed-income e-trading platform needed a modern, modular front-end architecture to support fast market data, RFQ negotiation flows, and seamless multi-application experiences. They turned to interop.io to power an integrated workspace matching the speed and complexity of fixed-income trading.

Goal

• Replace an existing UI container with a scalable, extensible, and interoperable workspace UI system with its own set of APIs
• Enable seamless context sharing across pricing grids, RFQ tickets, security details, and analytics
• Support high-performance, data-intensive workflows with optimized UI and data synchronization
• Adopt FDC3 standards and prepare for vendor integrations
• Establish a micro-frontend architecture for long-term modularity

Challenge

• Existing UI container lacked the layout flexibility and interoperability traders needed
• All React components were bundled under one URL using a factory-method approach, creating bottlenecks
• Fast-moving data required reliable context passing and optimized UI performance
• The platform needed role-based workspaces with dynamic, user-specific application lists

Solution

Through a focused proof of concept, the firm implemented:

• io.Connect Browser for a unified, multi-application trading solution
• Workspaces API for flexible, role-specific layouts and rapid task switching through powerful UI and API capabilities
• FDC3-enabled components for standardized context sharing across modules
• Dynamic application definition management using the InMemory API for user-specific application lists per session
• Phased migration strategy from a monolithic component host to lazy-loaded components, and ultimately to fully independent micro-frontends with optimized bundle loading

Key Technical Decisions

• Transition from factory-method instantiation to URL-based application definitions with lazy loading, enabling fully independent micro-frontends
• Implementation of the InMemory API for dynamic, role-based application provisioning at session start
• Use of the Workspaces API to control application visibility based on trader roles and entitlements