COMPANY » SUCCESS STORIES

fix protocol,electronic trading, fix connectivity

Citigroup

FIX connectivity deployment for Citigroup´s robust and diverse CORE trading network

As Greenline’s flagship solution, VeriFIX® is a comprehensive FIX testing system that dramatically reduces costs associated with the development and deployment of FIX protocol-based systems.

Business Challenge

Citigroup’s Order Routing Engine (CORE) connects to all seven U.S. options exchanges and over 20 equities venues. As a premier destination for the broker-dealer community, CORE sits between the client and the various execution venues, providing efficient, automated order routing since its inception in 2006.
During the initial stages of building CORE, the team recognized the need for a way to run message flow simulations between its clients and trading counterparties to properly represent the nuanced behavior of each market center it connects to.

Solution

In 2008, Citigroup selected and deployed Greenline’s VeriFIX to emulate client or “exchange” behavior in an automated fashion, facilitating both technology development and QA testing. In addition, VeriFIX enabled Citigroup to perform full end-to-end testing by using VeriFIX’s ability to populate and validate FIX messages based on previous days’ production log files.

  • Simulation: With VeriFIX, CORE team users are able to imitate trading behavior for the various liquidity providers. Whether on-boarding a new client or exchange, or testing new routing rules against existing flows, the CORE team confidently relied on the versatility of VeriFIX to perform in all the above scenarios.
  • Product Enhancements: At Citi’s request, Greenline customized VeriFIX to support the testing of multi-leg options and combination orders.
  • Performance Testing: The CORE team can take a day’s production logs from its FIX engine and replay in the VeriFIX Scenario Editor. Users can perform load and regression testing across multiple sessions.

Results

The efficiencies realized by Citigroup in its connectivity testing phase were dramatic. As a direct result of Greenline’s involvement, Citigroup achieved its FIX connectivity goals quickly, confidently, and in a cost effective manner. Citigroup continues to use VeriFIX for simulations as well as regression testing and statistical analysis.

“Anyone can build solid technology. What separates Greenline from the rest are not only their tools, but the great people to back them up – from user education, software configuration, to the outstanding support we’ve received well after the sale.”

“VeriFIX is open, configurable and powerful. If you need something extra, Greenline’s development team will partner with you to provide optimal service and solutions.”

– Ken Wilson, Director, Citigroup

Key Metrics

  • 150 customer interfaces in production
  • VeriFIX has been used well over 100 times as a simulator for new customer connections
  • The CORE team has completed 50 major code releases to the routing system in over 3 years