14. RFQ Trading

A software vendor has created an application that allows a user to request tradeable quotes from other Symphony users. In this RFQ scenario the replies from the other users (aka Counter Parties) are a binding offer to trade the instrument at the given price within a fixed time window. So if the requesting (aka originating) user confirms the price and quantity offered in an RQF response, both parties are committed to the trade.

The Symphony messages will use ‘structured’ text and so will allow a user to type in a response or for Coutner Parties to run auto-quoters to generate quotes. The format for these messages could be checked with the financial objects working group.

Carrying the trade messages over Symphony is vital since a party can rely on Symphony for end to end encryption, user authentication and Symphony can provide an independent record of the transaction messages (is this last bit true can Symphony recover messages ?).

In addition to the requirements from the Outlook calendar sync case (13 above) for identifying the logged on Symphony user and allowing authentication of the application, the RFQ application needs to send messages to each counter party. Counter parties must not see responses from other Counter Parties.

The current OBO API does not allow person to person messages,  but (check this is true) the OBO API does allow an application to write to an existing chat room and read messages from an existing chat room.

Therefore the application would need to ensure that a ‘requesting user’ i.e. a user that originates an RFQ has created a set of chat rooms, one per counterparty. The chat room name would have to be a

   Fn( Application, organisation, counter party id)

But the actual name may need to use encryption to stop a counter party from being able to identify which counter parties the Requesting user is contacting.

It would be better if the OBO API allowed person to person sending and receiving messages, with some restriction on which messages the app can see (maybe only messages with some special tag ?).