This is the project plan we hand to new counterparties at Drovix on day one. It is the same plan we use whether the buyer is a 50-person retail broker in Cyprus or a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund in London — the surface area changes, the structure does not.
Six weeks is the realistic baseline. Faster is possible, but every week you shave off compounds operational risk; the cost of a botched go-live is almost always higher than the cost of two more weeks of preparation.
Week 0 — RFP and shortlisting
Before day one of the six weeks, you have already shortlisted to no more than three providers and chosen one. The RFP should follow the twelve questions in our buyer's guide. Do not start the clock until you have a signed term sheet with your preferred counterparty and a fall-back option warm.
Week 1 — KYC and documentation
Day 1–2: Send the full KYC pack. Use a checklist; missing documents are the #1 cause of week-one delay.
Day 3–5: Provider compliance review. Expect at least one round of follow-up questions; respond within 24 hours.
Day 5: Receive provisional credit limits and the platform fee quote.
KYC documents checklist
- Certificate of incorporation
- UBO chart with all owners ≥10%, certified within last six months
- Audited financials, last two years
- Regulatory licence(s) — original PDF, not screenshot
- AML/CFT policy and board approval
- Directors' and UBOs' certified passports + proof of address ≤3 months old
- Bank reference letter for the account that will wire collateral
Week 2 — Contracting and credit
Day 6–8: Legal review of master agreement and CSA equivalent. Most pushback is around governing law and termination triggers; keep the legal team focused on the few clauses that actually matter (default, close-out netting, dispute jurisdiction).
Day 9–10: Wire test collateral (typically USD 100k for setup, scaled up later). Confirm bank rails work both directions.
Day 10: Sign master agreement, receive UAT credentials.
Week 3 — FIX certification, part one
Day 11: UAT logon, verify session parameters (heartbeat, sequence numbers, encryption).
Day 12–13: Order entry tests — new order single, replace, cancel, partial fills, market data subscription.
Day 14–15: Symbol mapping certification for every instrument you plan to trade. Do not skip this step. Run a script that walks every symbol on both sides and reconciles the metadata.
Week 4 — FIX certification, part two
Day 16–17: Burst testing at 10x normal message rate. Confirm throttling behaviour matches the FIX spec your engine expects.
Day 18–19: Failover drill — kill primary venue mid-trade, verify automatic re-routing.
Day 19: Drop-copy reconciliation against your back-office, end-to-end, for at least 100 simulated tickets.
Day 20: Sign-off from both technical teams; provisional production credentials issued.
Week 5 — Parallel running
Day 21: Connect production FIX session in parallel mode — shadow only, no execution.
Day 22–25: Record live quote stream alongside incumbent. Compute matched-cohort effective spread and last-look statistics daily.
Day 25: Internal review meeting. Decide whether to proceed; if not, extend parallel for another week.
Week 6 — Throttled cutover and first fills
Day 26: Enable execution at 10% routing share for the chosen first asset class (usually metals or exotics where you have headroom — not EUR/USD).
Day 27: First live fills. Compare against parallel-period predictions. Investigate any variance ≥10 bps.
Day 28: Increase to 25%. Hold for 24 hours of full session coverage.
Day 29: Increase to 50% if execution metrics are within tolerance.
Day 30: 100% on the first asset class. Begin parallel for the second asset class.
Post go-live — the 90-day review
At day 30, 60, and 90 from first live fill, hold a formal review covering fill ratio, effective spread, last-look statistics, latency percentiles, and post-trade reconciliation break rate. The 90-day review is the one where you decide whether the provider is delivering against the RFP commitments. Anything material that has drifted needs a remediation plan in writing.
The Drovix onboarding cadence
Drovix runs this playbook with a single named project manager from day one to day 90, including a shared project tracker so both sides see the same status at the same time. We default to symmetric last-look, publish capacity curves before you sign, and provide the parallel-run shadow session at no incremental cost.
If you want to see the project tracker template (we are happy to give it to non-customers as well — better playbooks raise the floor for everyone), the institutional sales desk will send it on request.
Analyst Desk
Drovix Research Desk
Institutional Research
Drovix Research Desk publishes institutional-grade analysis covering macro events, cross-asset correlations, and execution insights for professional market participants.