Citi to set up S’pore electronic currency trading facility

SINGAPORE: Citigroup Inc is planning to join UBS AG with an electronic currency trading and pricing platform, here, setting up systems to boost liquidity in Asia’s biggest foreign exchange (forex) hub.

Singapore would become the fourth forex trading engine location for Citi after Tokyo, New York and London, said the bank in a statement yesterday.

“The expansion of our FX trading engine will lead to a vast improvement in latency for our clients in Singapore and across much of Asia-Pacific, who prior to this would connect via Tokyo or one of our trading engines outside of the region,” said Stuart Staley, Asia Pacific head of markets and securities services.

The facility, which is slated to go live in the fourth quarter, would support 23 spot currencies including all those in the Group-of-Ten.

The planned expansion is expected to inject more liquidity into Singapore’s currency market, which recorded US$517 billion (RM2.1 trillion) in daily average trading volume in 2016, higher than Hong Kong and Japan, according to a triennial central bank survey by the Bank for International Settlements.

Citi’s system is expected to support 13 deliverable emergingmarket currencies.

The engine would be built inhouse and includes a proprietary pricing and hedging algorithm, through which clients can deal.

In addition to currencies, the platform will also allow trading of gold and silver.

Citi was the fifth-largest currency trading firm by market share last year, after the likes of JPMorgan and UBS, according to a Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc survey.