Charles River Development has enhanced the Charles River Network, its broker-neutral financial network for global real-time electronic trading via FIX (Financial Information eXchange), with secure, internet-based Virtual Private Network (VPN) capabilities. This solution allows firms to use the internet, instead of traditional dedicated telecommunications infrastructure, to trade electronically via FIX. A secure VPN Interconnect Hub within the Charles River Network lowers cost and eliminates telecommunications infrastructure and complexity.



“The Charles River Network has always offered reliable global access to a wide variety of liquidity sources,” said Ed Fitzpatrick, Director, Network Services, Charles River Development. “Now, integrated VPN functionality gives investment managers and brokers with few counterparties, or those in remote locations with high telecommunications costs, a secure and low-cost alternative for FIX connectivity.” 



“Charles River is seeing rapid adoption of FIX in emerging markets, such as China, Brazil and Mexico,” said Tom Driscoll, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Charles River Development. “VPN connectivity for FIX is particularly attractive for firms in these markets because they can quickly get up and running with little investment. Even for firms that want to use a dedicated telco infrastructure for FIX, there can sometimes be significant lead time for telco installation. In these cases, VPN connectivity is a good temporary solution.” 



The Charles River Network is fully integrated with the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS) and provides low-latency connectivity to all major trading venues worldwide. Charles River IMS clients, who also subscribe to the Network, decrease their total cost of ownership via a single point of contact for both their investment management and electronic trading needs. 



Launched in 2005, the Charles River Network now has more than 100 Charles River clients, over 400 brokers and more than 3,400 live broker-client connections. Charles River’s FIX Network Services include: complete FIX software administration; testing; certification; and connectivity management – improving connectivity speed and issues resolution, and decreasing trading errors due to improper configuration and testing.