As downloads grew 5x this year, financial services institutions and application developers can now accelerate their FDC3 skillsets through new Linux Foundation Training and Certification programs

NEW YORK, NY – October 30, 2023 - The Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), the financial services umbrella of the Linux Foundation, today announced the 2.1 version of the Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium (FDC3) standard, the ”Developing Solutions for FDC3” training course, the first beta of the “FINOS Certified FDC3 Practitioner” certification, as well a new FDC3 Certified Desktop. These initiatives, crafted and tested in collaboration with leading financial and fintech institutions show the continued importance of FDC3 across sell-side, buy-side and increasingly VC-backed startups, as it will be showcased this week at the 9th annual Open Source in Finance Forum.

“Today marks a major milestone for FDC3, at the tail end of a year where we saw the standard grow exponentially with its adoption with over 250.000 downloads and increased VC-funding and M&A activity in the ecosystem,” said Gabriele Columbro, Executive Director of FINOS. “I want to thank the FDC3 community, not only because the 2.1 version adds critical new features that will enable true cross-industry interoperability, but because formal training and certification will provide a mature and predictable way to skill the workforce and thus continue growing adoption”. 

FDC3 2.1

FDC3 2.1 introduces a long-awaited 5th part to the FDC3 Standard in the form of Desktop Agent Bridging, enabling application interoperability across different devices and desktop agents.

Inter-agent communication has been a goal of FDC3 since its first version, now realized through collaboration between Desktop Agent vendors, banks, asset managers and a number of other firms actively contributing to the standard. FINOS also hosts FDC3 Backplane, a project originally contributed by NatWest Markets which implements a reference 'Bridge', with plugin support for working with an organization's in-house infrastructure.

Following the 2.1 release, ongoing work on the FDC3 Standard will continue under the Community Specification License (CSL), the best-of-breed open specification license developed by the Joint Development Foundation (JDF).

Training Course: Developing Solutions with FDC3

In September 2023, FINOS announced the general availability of a new introductory training course for FDC3, Introduction to FDC3 (LFEL1000) which introduced the key concepts of FDC3 to a general audience.   

Since then, the FDC3 community worked relentlessly to create a follow-up course focusing on FDC3 application development, Developing Solutions with FDC3 (LFD237).

Designed specifically for developers at financial institutions and vendors, this new course prepares IT professionals to develop applications that leverage FDC3 standards, the competency to build and publish FDC3-enabled applications, and the ability to define their own custom contextual objects and intents.

Both these courses are available to view on the Linux Foundation’s training portal:

• Introduction to FDC3 (LFEL1000)

• Developing Solutions with FDC3 (LFD237)

Qualification: FINOS Certified FDC3 Practitioner (FCFP)

In response to the growing size of the FDC3 practitioner community, the FDC3 maintainers authored a professional certification designed for practitioners and consultancies building FDC3 solutions.  

The FCFP certification demonstrates understanding and command of the FDC3 standard to  colleagues, leaders and prospective employers. Designed for technical business analysts, software developers, and FDC3 implementers in the finance, insurance, banking, and investment industries, the FCFP demonstrates the ability to deploy FDC3 concepts in real-world use cases.

FCFP is currently undergoing its free beta period Developers are encouraged to take advantage of this free period to gain the certification by taking the FINOS Certified FDC3 Practitioner qualification.

FINOS members receive a substantial number of free seats they can use for both these courses and exams and any other training and certification materials published by the Linux Foundation.  A full list of member benefits can be found here and interested parties should join as a Member here.

FINOS are proud to announce conformance of the OpenFin desktop agent (version 32.114.76.14) against their published suite of FDC3 2.0 conformance tests.

Said Johan Sandersson, FDC3 Maintainer and Director of Product at OpenFin: "We are pleased to add the latest FDC3 conformance badge to OpenFin. We support both the FDC3 1.2 and 2.0 specifications, supporting backward compatibility for our customers and also enabling the new 2.0 capabilities. This approach is key for delivering seamless interoperability to the thousands of banks and and buy-side firms where OpenFin is running today."

This new version of OpenFin joins products from interop.io to achieve FDC3 2.0 conformance,  a crucial part of the FDC3 standard facilitating seamless interoperability between finance-related applications on desktops and other devices.

The full list of adopters and FDC3 Certified Desktop Agents can be found here and anyone can apply for certification here.

Industry Response

“We are excited to see FDC3 evolving with a strong new version, developer training & certification, and vendor agnostic capabilities. These are important steps towards bringing down the cost and time to market for desktop integration across buy and sell sides.“ Madeleine Dassule, Partner and Co-Head of Technology at Wellington Management and Vice-Chair of the FINOS Governing Board.