The Enterprise Data Management Council (EDM) is the author and steward of the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO). FIBO is a collaborative effort among industry practitioners, semantic technology experts and information scientists to standardize the language used to precisely define the terms, conditions, and characteristics of financial instruments; the legal and relationship structure of business entities; the content and time dimensions of market data; and the legal obligations and process aspects of corporate actions.
FIBO is being released as a series of standards under the technical governance of the Object Management Group (OMG), with the direct involvement of EDM Council membership. FIBO is based on the legal structures and obligations contained within the myriad of contracts that form the foundation of the financial industry.
FIBO Benefits
FIBO presents knowledge about financial instruments, business entities, market data and corporate actions in a technology neutral format along with formal definitions and defined business relationships. FIBO standardizes the language of financial contracts and promotes unambiguous shared meaning among all participants in the financial industry. Use cases and benefit areas include:
Common reference standard for aligning multiple repositories of data: FIBO provides the mechanism for data consistency and comparability. It facilitates data integration, supports business process automation and enables consolidated views across the financial industry.
Standardized language for internal and external communication: FIBO is a business language and facilitates precise communication (in place of ad hoc spreadsheets and technical models) about data requirements between business stakeholders and IT developers of applications, message schemas etc.
Utlizing Ontology and specifically the FIBO implementation allows one to be able to ask questions about the assets that a company holds, and get correct answers. Examples include: How many of the assets are taxable? What is the tax liability? With a standard ontology, the rules and regulations can be expressed in terms of these semantics. Financial institutions go through all their assets and assign semantic meaning by representing those assets. FIBO will provide clarity to both financial entity leadership and regulators.
