New StanChart FX Engine Delivers Significant Trade Latency Gains

Standard Chartered’s newly set up electronic pricing engine for global currencies completed its first-ever trade with promising improvements to efficiency.

The trade was executed earlier this week with counterparty UOB and resulted in a reduction in trade latency of over 80 percent. Improved efficiency resulted in better volumes which would have generated an estimated 30 percent increase in profits, according to a statement from the bank.

In June last year, Standard Chartered announced plans to launch the electronic FX pricing engine in the first quarter of 2020, with support from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to enhance efficient access to liquidity in the city-state. The bank’s e-channels already experienced a 30 percent increase in spot trading volumes in 2019 and it expects the trend for greater adoption to continue.

As one of the major FX participants in Singapore, we remain committed to leveraging this new solution to effectively serve our clients’ currency and commodities needs by offering them a seamless and consistent pricing experience for their hedging requirements,» said Michele Wee, head of financial markets, Singapore, at Standard Chartered Bank. «With the enhanced efficiency proven by this trade using the new e-trading and pricing engine, we expect this positive trajectory to continue.

The new engine provides e-trading capability for 130 currencies and over 5,000 currency pairs in spot, forwards, swaps, non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) and options alongside commodities e-trading for precious and base metals. The launch complements the bank’s three other existing e-trading engines in London, New York and Tokyo.