Scotiabank increases FX sale limit to commercial customers by 400%
Move designed to boost trading volumes while satisfying customer demands
Scotiabank has increased by 400% its foreign exchange (FX) sale limit to commercial customers, as it seeks to satisfy market demand while at the same time boosting trading volumes.
The new foreign exchange limit is the equivalent of US$50,000 per customer per transaction coming from US$10,000.
Scotia’s senior vice president for Corporate and Commercial Banking, Perrin Gayle, who made the disclosure in responding to questions from The Caribbean Business Report (CBR), said the increase took effect earlier this month.
He said that, “customers are now able to purchase the equivalent of US$50,000 in alternative currency, which is an increase of US$10,000.”
The increase in Scotiabank’s FX sale limit at this time is very timely, as merchants, in particular are very active in the market, buying up hard currency for Christmas purchases.
Gayle argued that the 400% increase in the FX selling limit will allow commercial customers greater flexibility to purchase hard currency on the bank’s FX selling platform.
The higher FX sale limit should see the banking group improving its net gains on foreign currency activities and financial assets, which declined in the July 31 third quarter by $537 million or 8.4 per cent owing to lower trading volumes and sale of securities.
Arising from the increased limit Scotiabank is now putting in place some changes.
The first of which is systematically amending the buying limits for each customer on its system.
Gayle explained to CBR that on Scotia’s FX system “each customer would have had individual limits set when they signed up for its CMS (Customer Management System) at various points in time. So we are going through the process of notifying customers, letting them know that this (increase) is available and working with customers to make the change to their limits so they can actually carry out these larger transactions via the FX platform.”