Exchange Data International (EDI) has introduced a fixed income corporate actions service based on the ISO 15022 messaging standard. The service is a response to customer interest in moving away from corporate actions services based on proprietary formats and towards services that are compliant with the ISO 15022 standard.

The fixed income ISO 15022 feed complements EDI’s existing equity ISO 15022 corporate actions service. It covers corporate, government bond and government agency issues from 150 countries, including changes to their terms and conditions, and all messages including cash flows, partial and full redemptions and conversions, and defaults and bankruptcies.

The fixed income release has been beta tested and is available on its own or integrated with EDI’s equity ISO 15022 corporate actions service for firms managing both types of instruments. The company is also offering a version of the fixed income corporate actions service including MT568 extended text, which adds additional narrative information to notifications.

Jonathan Bloch, CEO at EDI, explains that the ISO 15022 fixed income corporate actions feed replaces a proprietary format feed and supports the automation of corporate actions data, in turn improving operational efficiency and minimising risk. He adds: “Large investment banks and fund management firms are moving to ISO 15022 feeds in line with their custodians and to improve efficiency in the back office. ISO 15022 feeds are not yet as prevalent as proprietary feeds, but they will become so as more vendors provide them and they are more widely adopted.”

EDI continuously monitors changes made to the ISO 15022 standard and will upgrade its feed from ISO 2014 compliance to ISO 2015 compliance early next year. Bloch expects about 10 existing and new clients to sign up for the ISO 15022 fixed income corporate actions service over the next six months.