The Business Process Optimisation Committee

The EFET Business Process Optimisation Committee and the Task Forces and Working Groups which support it, deal with the vital but often overlooked issues relating to the efficiency of back office processes and the safe and efficient exchange of data.

As trading volumes grew during the first decade of the 21st century, traditional means of communication like phone and fax were increasingly replaced by automated electronic communication. Energy trading companies were increasingly looking to find more efficient ways of integrating business processes, reducing operational risks and bringing down transaction costs. Because effective electronic communication requires a common communication and business process standard, there was a need for a neutral party to develop and oversee such standards. That role was played by EFET.

EFET was the first1 to define the common electronic data exchange standards for energy trading. Starting in 2004, EFET has progressively developed standard processes for:

  • Electronic Confirmations Matching – (eCM) - which standardises the business processes concerning the exchange and validation of electronic trade confirmations.
  • Electronic Broker Matching - (eBM) (electronic Broker matching) – which is an integral part of the eCM whereby traders and the involved broker can opt for a 3-way matching. It can exist bilaterally (if only one of the 2 traders is using eCM but it is still under the process umbrella of eCM
  • Electronic Regulatory Reporting (eRR) - which standardises the process for regulatory reporting under Dodd-Frank, EMIR, REMIT, Swiss ElCom and MiFID II.
  • Electronic Settlement Marching (eSM) – which allows discrepancies and errors to be removed from settlement data, enabling automated payments to drive shorter settlement cycles. ESM is a particularly focus on our current work within the BPOC committee.

EFET’s work has helped the Over The Counter (OTC) market to operate in an efficient and effective manner. The standards have enabled Trading Companies to conduct much larger trade volumes whilst also reducing operational risk. EFET has also put in place standards to help report trades to Regulators.

If you’d like to find out more about our work, please contact the Secretary to the BPOC, Gavin Ferguson, or explore the links below:

  • Current version of EFET Standards
  • More about our ESM project



1 ISDA issued FpML to describe financial transactions in 2001 but focused on the structure of transactions, rather than the probusiness processes and the specific values to be used within that structure.
(https://www.fpml.org/)

 
Member Companies