BNP Paribas will establish an electronic FX pricing and trading engine in Singapore, making it the latest bank to work alongside the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in a bid to develop the region as an FX trading hub.
The FX pricing and trading engine will provide electronic trading in 50 currencies in spot, forward, swaps, non-deliverable forwards, options, and commodities e-trading for precious and base metals.
The French investment bank follows in the footsteps of several other major banks that have made moves to establish FX pricing and trading engines in Singapore, including JP Morgan, Citigroup, UBS, Standard Chartered, as well as Jump Trading, Euronext and XTX Markets.
Executive director for the financial development department at MAS, Gillian Tan, said the trading engine will look to improve clients’ trading experience with low latency and pricing for efficient price discovery and liquidity, supporting ‘follow-the-sun’ execution in FX.
“BNP Paribas’s decision to launch its e-FX pricing and trading engine in Singapore will be an added boost to Singapore and Asia’s FX market,” Tan added. “Over time, global and regional market participants will benefit from the further development of the FX market in Singapore to conduct greater trading and risk management in the Asian time zone.”
Plans to establish the FX trading engine in Singapore follows the launch of BNP Paribas’ newly revamped FX algorithmic trading platform, Cortex Live, which deploys interactive algorithms and real-time analytics delivered via an artificial intelligence-based digital trading assistant, known as ‘ALiX’.
“With the delivery of both the e-FX engine and Cortex LIVE in Singapore, clients here will benefit from an unrivalled combination of real-time feedback, quicker and more intelligent trade execution, greater transparency and enhanced controls,” said Rawad Khodr, regional head of G10 FX spot trading for global markets in APAC at BNP Paribas.