Deutsche Bank today announced that it will establish an electronic foreign exchange (e-FX) hub in Singapore by developing an FX trading and pricing engine onshore, in conjunction with the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Deutsche Bank ranked number 2 for FX globally in 2019, according to Euromoney. The initiative will make the city-state of Singapore Deutsche Bank’s fourth global FX centre, along with New York, London and Tokyo.
The Singapore e-FX hub will provide clients with the ability to execute FX transactions more closely aligned with geographic location, reducing latency, improving on local price transparency and liquidity.
Deutsche Bank Head of Fixed Income and Currencies APAC, Head of Corporate Bank APAC and Chief Country Officer, Singapore David Lynne said, “Given the substantial increase in demand for Asia currency e-FX we have seen in the past five years, growing client sophistication in e-FX trading, and the MAS’ focus on further developing the leading FX centre in the region, hubbing this activity in Singapore makes perfect sense.”
The Deutsche Bank e-FX hub will be developed and staffed locally, and will be aligned to Deutsche Bank’s focus across e-trading, fintech clients and digital FX payments.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore Executive Director, Financial Markets Development, Ms Gillian Tan said: “We are heartened by Deutsche Bank’s commitment to build its fourth global FX electronic pricing and trading engine in Singapore, which will complement its APAC fixed income & currencies and global transaction businesses operating here. This will allow Deutsche Bank to build on its strengths as a key global FX player and support its regional clients with enhanced price discovery and execution from Singapore, while leveraging Singapore’s strengths as Asia’s pre-eminent FX centre.”
As global cross border payment processes rapidly move towards being completely digital, Deutsche Bank will further develop its Singapore infrastructure to be the payments hub for transactional FX business in APAC. This will enable the bank to offer faster, automated FX and payment processes across the high growth but complex Asia markets, creating a center of excellence to drive digital real time treasury and open banking from Singapore into payment corridors across the region and globally.
With Singapore the Fixed Income and Currencies centre for Deutsche Bank in Asia Pacific, the new e-FX hub forms part of the bank’s continued investment and development into digital and electronic platform client solutions.
Co-Head of APAC G10 FX Lee Merchant said, “Deutsche Bank’s current e-FX platform spans a wide range of tools for both institutional and corporate clients, with a focus on algorithm and API technology. We have successfully developed these solutions in Singapore and the broader APAC region; we will continue to invest heavily into this area.”
This year Deutsche Bank won the Profit & Loss Innovation award for Digital FX and awards for e-FX Excellence for Market Colour, Autobahn OTC Structure (AOS) and Autobahn Mobile. Profit & Loss is a leading industry trade title for the FX and derivatives markets.
