German bank Deutsche Bank announced its plans to launch an electronic foreign exchange (e-FX) hub in Singapore. The bank will establish the hub by developing an FX trading and pricing engine, in conjunction with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MIS).
The Singapore e-FX hub will be Deutsche Bank’s fourth global FX centre after New York, London and Tokyo. It will offer clients the ability to execute FX transactions that are closed aligned with geographic location, reduce latency and improve on local price transparency and liquidity.
The German bank will develop and staff the new e-FX hub locally and it will be aligned with the bank’s focus areas of e-trading, fintech clients and digital FX payments.
Deutsche Bank fixed income and currencies APAC head, corporate bank APAC head and Singapore chief country officer 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.”
Deutsche Bank stated that it will further develop Singapore infrastructure as a payments hub for transactional FX business in the Asia Pacific region, as global cross border payment processes rapidly become digitalised.
It will enable the bank to offer faster, automated FX and payment processes across high growth yet complex Asia markets. The new hub is part of the bank’s continued investment and development into digital and electronic platform client solutions.
Monetary Authority of Singapore financial markets development executive director 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.”