Business capabilities
The capability map organises work into 17 Business Domains and 171 Service Domains. Each page defines an area of responsibility and links it to the information it uses.
Open reference model
The Open Investment Model
OpenIM maps the business capabilities and core information of an institutional investment firm. It is open, vendor neutral and available for people and software to use.
Teams can use the same map in architecture and product work. It also gives data tooling machine-readable context.
17 Business Domains
171 Service Domains
86 Canonical entities
Why it exists
Investment firms use detailed standards for instruments and transactions. Vendor products and internal architecture maps describe other parts of the firm.
Teams also need a shared view of the firm's capabilities and core information. OpenIM provides that view as a public reference model with traceable source material and generated machine-readable exports.
What a shared model makes answerable
These examples show the questions that the model helps teams frame consistently. OpenIM names the capabilities and information involved. Each firm supplies its own data and calculation rules, together with firm-specific controls.
- What is this fund’s NAV per unit, and exactly what moved it since the last strike?
- What is our AUM, by strategy and by asset class?
- What is our counterparty exposure and collateral coverage on the OTC sleeve?
- Where do two systems disagree on a position or a mark, and which is right?
- Is this the same counterparty as that one, resolved to a single legal entity across every feed?
What OpenIM is
The model connects the work of the firm to the information that work uses.
Core information
The information model defines 86 canonical entities. A core of 38 covers concepts shared across firms. 5 specialisation packs add detail for different investment structures and operations.
How it relates to existing standards
OpenIM provides a firm-level reference model. It reuses or links to specialist standards where they already define a concept.
- FIBO
- OpenIM links to FIBO terms for financial instruments and legal entities.
- ISDA CDM
- ISDA CDM describes trade and lifecycle events. OpenIM places that detail within a wider view of the firm.
- BIAN
- BIAN offers a banking service landscape. OpenIM applies a comparable reference-model approach to institutional investment.
- FINOS glue
- The archived glue project explored a shared investment-management vocabulary. OpenIM records it as prior art.
Review and contribute
OpenIM is published under the MIT licence. You can inspect the source and raise a specific issue. The documented governance process explains how to propose a change.