As part of our commitment to continually develop the trading functionality of LIFFE CONNECT® and provide choice to our customers, Euronext.liffe traditionally required mandatory conformance of all ISV trading applications to selected functionality for the LIFFE CONNECT® Trading Host.*

This approach has ensured that the high levels of trading functionality required, particularly for the successful trading of Short Term Interest Rate Futures and Options, are widely available in the marketplace.

* this excludes Member Developed Order Routing applications, which are subject to separate conformance criteria.

Euronext.liffe's extensive product suite no longer dictates a need for an "across the board" approach to high levels of conformance testing. In addition, new initiatives which have seen the sale of LIFFE CONNECT® to other exchanges globally mean that future LIFFE CONNECT® releases may include functionality that is not relevant to the customer base of each individual ISV.

Given these changes Euronext.liffe has adopted a new approach which allows ISVs to select which functionality to develop their trading applications to, depending on their customer base. This also allows customers to shortlist the trading applications that provide the functionality to suit their trading needs and informs their decision process.

Instead of making certain functionality "mandatory" or "optional", Euronext.liffe now offers three "tiers" of conformance for ISV trading applications. The tiers are as follows:

• Tier 1 - Applications containing full functionality offered by LIFFE CONNECT®
• Tier 2 - Applications containing the functionality offered by LIFFE CONNECT® for selected or specialised functions
• Tier 3 - Applications containing minimal functionality to access LIFFE CONNECT®

It is important to note that the tier allocations relate to the functionality offered by the trading application developed by the ISV and is not intended to be a ranking of the ISV.