Kevin Houstoun Elected as Director, FIX Protocol Limited

Rapid Addition is delighted to confirm its Executive Chairman, Kevin Houstoun, has been appointed as a Director of FIX Protocol Limited following a recent membership ballot. Kevin is appointed along with Emma Quinn, SVP, Global Co-head of Equity Trading, Alliance Bernstein, and Lou Rosato, Director at BlackRock.

Kevin has had a long association with FIX, having been involved in the initial foundation of FPL and ultimately going on to co-chair the FPL Global technical Committee between 2002 to 2012. Although stepping down from the role when asked to lead the Global Standards in Financial Markets initiative by the UK Government, Kevin has remained a strong supporter of the FIX Trading Community and the value it brings to our industry.

An engineer by background, Kevin first became involved in the capital markets when joining Robert Fleming in 1996, where he wrote one of the first FIX engines in Europe. Moving to Salomon Brother in 1999 as co-head European Equity Electronic Trading, Kevin had the pleasure of working with Jim Leman and the other founders of FIX, before going on to a successful stint in electronic trading strategy at HSBC. Kevin’s expertise in this field led to key roles in several Government reviews, including the Future of Computer Based Trading and the Blackett UK fintech review. In addition to his current role as Executive Chairman at Rapid Addition, Kevin is also a Visiting Researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Systemic Risk Centre.

Kevin was nominated for the FIX Director role on the basis of his manifesto which highlighted his conviction that standards are central to the ongoing evolution of electronic trading and for creating highly efficient, increasingly automated financial markets:

1. FPL will need a clear vision for the next phase of the evolution of FIX. It cannot be incremental.
2. Coronavirus will challenge FPL’s business model, with restrictions on conferences and pressure on membership subscriptions directly impacting key revenue streams. We need a clear strategy to survive and remain a force for good in our industry.
3. Margin compression and the rising regulatory burden continue to create cost challenges across our membership base. We must refocus on driving cost out of the trading lifecycle.
4. We need to understand the current and future impact of regulators, government entities and other standards bodies on market structure and practices, workingin collaboration to continually drive down costs and generate greater engagement from our members and users.
5. As electronic trading continues to mature, we need to ensure that FIX remains a central standard to help firms evolve to a fully automated business model.
6. The future of electronic trading will be to empower the end client with more control and FIX will need to support this with standards that facilitate a more dynamic environment.
7. Finally, I fundamentally believe there should be more transparency for members regarding the operation of FPL and will strongly campaign for this at the board level if elected.