10 Observations on the BIS FX Turnover Survey

The data may be preliminary and there is much more detail to come, but here are 10 themes or data points from the BIS Triennial Survey that offer interesting insight into changing trends in the FX market – or maybe do not present the ‘real’ picture.

1: Singapore is Becoming the Dominant Force in Asia – Largely at the Expense of Japan

The rise of Singapore is not a new story, but the pace at which it is growing is perhaps. In the latest survey there were two notable increases in market share for centres, Germany went up 1.2% (to 3.1%), and Singapore, which rose 2.3% to 11.8%. To give some perspective to this, in the last 15 years of the BIS survey, only twice has a major centre seen such growth – Hong Kong from the 2013-2016 surveys when it leapt 2.6% (and has largely stayed steady since); and the UK from 2010-2013 when it rose 4.1%, and 2016-2019 when it rose 6.3%).

Notably with both the UK occasions, they were largely outliers, in the latest survey that centre’s share of global volume is just 1.1% higher than it was in 2010. The same cannot be said for Singapore, which, in 2010, was in competition with Australia, Hong Kong and Switzerland for fourth place behind the UK, US and Japan. It had a 5.3% share of the market, which has now more than doubled, while the others? Australia is 2.2% lower, Hong Kong is 3.3% higher, thanks largely to the rise of the RMB, and Switzerland is 2% lower.

Singapore has also reinforced its advantage over Japan, which should be worried about its place in the FX market if the latest data is anything to go by. True, absolute volume in Japan has risen in the latest survey, but the pace of growth is negligible, just 0.15% from the 2022 survey and what looks like a more respectable 41% since 2010. I say more respectable because over the same period Singapore’s turnover has risen almost six times – and Hong Kong has grown nearly four times.

The real concern for Japan as a centre is how the latest survey came at a time when the yen was busy – as Tokyo has become a more regionalised centre it has relied more upon yen volume compared to 20 years ago. In the latest BIS survey, USD/JPY was the only top six currency pair to see its share of volume increase, by 0.8% to 14.3%, which would suggest Tokyo would reap the benefit. Clearly this didn’t happen for while notional volume rose $7 billion per day in Japan, in USD/JPY it rose the small matter of $363 billion per day – that’s a lot of yen being traded offshore. This was also the highest ratio for USD/JPY since the 2016 survey.

One final observation of Singapore’s dominance in Asia – for the first time it is doing more than Hong Kong and Japan combined, by some $162 billion per day. Hong Kong is growing, not at the pace of Singapore, but it can be optimistic with the continued growth in RMB trading. Can the same be said for Japan? It seems unlikely. It will remain a reasonably important centre, but does seem to have missed the boat.

2: The Semi-Annual FX Committee Turnover Reports are a Good Barometer

Every six months we get the FX turnover reports from seven of the world’s FX committees and while some collate on a different basis to the BIS (location of the trading desk rather than sales desk), they clearly offer a good insight into global activity.

In the latest round of reports, published for April 2022, six centres’ reports (Hong Kong did not publish) suggested a “BIS Number” of $9.4 trillion, and it came in at $9.6 trillion.

This suggests that trading and sales desks are perhaps more aligned (the inferred difference has been larger previously), but also potentially answers a long-asked question about the BIS survey – does it need to go annual?

It is, without doubt a very useful survey, but takes a lot of work to construct, both on the part of the BIS, local central banks and the reporting banks themselves. It could be argued that the local FXC surveys are doing the job for us in reporting every six months and as such rather than shifting more work onto the BIS perhaps the local FX committees should be given more resources to provide slightly more comprehensive reports around areas such as execution channels?

One other solution could be for one or two more FX committees to start collating the data and publishing their own surveys, most notably, the European Central Bank’s FX Contact Group as well as, possibly, the Nordic Countries FX Committee?

3: Swaps Tenors are Moving Out…in Swaps at Least

Still on surveys, the upheaval in global markets relating to the US’ efforts to impose tariffs has offered evidence that hedging periods are being extended to deal with the uncertainty, and this is confirmed in the BIS survey to a degree. While there is a definite shift in FX swaps, in outrights it is more ambiguous.

Volume numbers across the board are higher of course, but it’s in the share of activity that the trends are perhaps starting to be seen. The share of FX swaps trading up to seven days tenor fell for the first time since 2016-19, and at 68% of FX swaps turnover, it is the second lowest percentage share of activity since the BIS started publishing the data in 1995 (beaten only by 64.4% in the 2019 survey).

Conversely, the share of swaps with tenors between seven days and one month rose to 12.4% from 11.1% in 2022 (the BIS only started breaking down tenors from one week to one year in the 2019 survey), while the share of one month to three months rose to13% from 11.2% (it was 16% in 2019) and threes-to-sixes went to 4.2% from 4.1%. The hedging isn’t going too far out, however, for over six months’ share drifted to 2.5% from 2.6%.

In outright forwards the short-end saw growth, maturities up to one week was 34.3% of volume (from 33% in 2022 but below the previous decade’s average of around 38%), while one week to one month rose to 29.6% from 28%. Beyond there, however, the share of longer tenors dropped, from 6.1% to 5.5% in the one-to-three-month bucket, and from 4.5% to 3.1% in the threes-to-sixes.

It remains to be seen whether this is the start of a trend or just a reaction to a rather chaotic geopolitical landscape, but either way, dealers will be pleased that they are seeing more business further down the curve where there is often more value for them.

4: Banks Still Dominate FX

There remains something of an obsession in the FX industry over “the buy-side”, and it is important that the currency markets remain true to their roots and oil the machinery of international finance, but the biggest group of counterparties in this market by far are banks.

Reporting Dealers make up the majority of turnover, and this is the case across all FX products, which makes you wonder where they are doing the majority of the near $1.2 trillion a day in spot that goes on between them, followed in second place by non-reporting banks.

Together, FX trading between banks makes up 70% of global turnover and 64% of spot trading – which begs the question, are some banks at or around the top tier missing a trick by not focusing more on regional banks? Several do, of course – and it is notable that one or two of the more “genuine” non-bank LPs have made this sector a specific target over the years – but there are others who don’t, preferring instead to focus on the traditional buy side. Granted, there is probably more margin in trading with the traditional buy side, but it is shrinking, at what point do they start to compete more for other banks’ business?

Just to reinforce the point, these shares have gone up in the last survey, from 67.7% and 61.6% respectively. For further perspective, in the 2013 survey, they were at 61.6% and 57.7% respectively.

So if you’re talking FX, you’re still talking a heavily bank-dominated market, although, as we note later, a lot of the regional bank business is end-user generated. For most at the top table, however, accessing these end users is difficult and costly, which means the regional players play a huge role in the market, and probably deserve a little more respect than they get – especially if we are to retain a healthy ecosystem.

5: Is RMB Now Officially a “Major”?

Historically, the four “major” currency pairs were the dollar against the euro, yen, Sterling and Swiss franc. The franc has lost status steadily since the advent of the euro, and was surpassed by USD/CAD and AUD/USD, but Sterling was comfortably the third busiest currency.

It retains that status in the latest survey as the fourth largest currency by turnover, but a gap that was 5.9% (12.9% share for GBP) in 2022, is now just 1.7%, thanks to a decline in Sterling turnover (to 10.2%), but also a surge in what the BIS terms CNY trading, up to 8.5%.

Even more to the point, in currency pair terms, Cable has been eclipsed by USD/CNY, the latter moving to third place, from a 6.6% share in 2022, to 8.1% in 2025, while the former has dropped to fourth, its share falling from 9.5% to 7.6%.

There is no doubt that trading was boosted by the tariff-related volatility in Dollar-Asia generally, so it may well be an outlier, if not for two things. Firstly, this is a continuation of a trend that has emerged over the last decade – with the exception of 2016-19 the gap has narrowed; and secondly, it is clear from the semi-annual surveys that CNY (or CNH/RMB) trading is on the up.

Things may be reversed in the next survey, but if they, it is likely only a temporary respite for Cable – thus suggesting that our four “majors” now are EUR/USD, USD/JPY, USD/RMB and GBP/USD.

6: Frankfurt has won the EU Battle – and is closing in on Japan

Post-Brexit there was a flurry of appointments, especially at banks, on Continental Europe, some to appease EU regulators, others to genuinely build a business there to work alongside London. At the time the main contest appeared to be between Germany (Frankfurt largely) and France (Paris), if so, it seems to have decisively been settled, in favour of the former.

We have already discussed the leap in share for Singapore, but the second largest increase in FX turnover attributed to a country? Germany, which rose to 3.1% from 1.9% in the last survey. France meanwhile, saw its share drop to 1.9% from 2.2%. This means, for the first time since the BIS started collating the data, Germany is a busier centre than France.

Germany, therefore, seems to have firmly established itself as the EU centre of choice for FX sales desks at least, something that should not really be a surprise given the presence of the EU’s central bank in Frankfurt, but it is also growing globally as well.

Switzerland also saw its share drop, but that is likely to be largely due to the demise of Credit Suisse, which left a large hole in the market (Swiss franc trading actually went up, however, globally).

What is perhaps more notable is how Germany is closing the gap to Japan as a centre, now being just $54 billion per day behind in notional terms and 0.3% in market share. It remains well behind Hong Kong, but for the EU at least, there is now little doubt which is the FX centre of the bloc.

7: Has Retail Taken a Dive?

In the BIS survey, “Other” counterparties, has historically meant retail aggregators, who don’t fit comfortably into another bucket. In the latest survey, acknowledging that it is hard to get granular detail at this stage, the host of prime-of-primes out there seem to be fighting over a smaller pie.

In 2022 the amount of turnover allocated to “Other” counterparties was $544 billion, of which $187 billion was in spot. In 2025 that had slumped to $273 billion and $94 billion respectively. Outright volumes also fell sharply, as they did in swaps, with only options showing a rise across the two surveys.

This could be the swings of market sentiment, of course, and retail punters may have been more focused on equity markets in April, but there does seem some cause for concern, because turnover is back to levels seen in the April 2016 survey, which came just four months after so many retail traders were wiped out by SNB day.

Perhaps they are finally realising en masse, that most of them don’t make money from FX?

8: Are the Prime Brokers Gaining Different Clients?

The numbers look good for prime brokers, volumes rose by 61.5% from 2022 and its share of the market jumped from 37.6% to 43.3% – an extra $448 billion per day in spot alone.

At $1.281 trillion a day, PB is a huge part of the spot market, and getting bigger – but who is using it? Hedge funds and prop trading firms, traditional clients of the PBs, turned over $357 billion in spot every day, and, as noted, another solid client base, retail aggregators, did $94 billion a day. This leaves the matter of a cheeky $830 billion a day going through PB from other segments.

Certainly some asset managers under the institutional investor umbrella would be taking PB, but certainly not all, but even if half were, there would still be $600 billion a day unaccounted for. The best assumption is this is made up from non-reporting banks – the second biggest sector in the market.

To put this into perspective, the “gap” in the latest survey is not far short of all spot business through a PB in the 2022 survey, in which, the gap after Hedge funds, PTFs and Others were taken out, was just $383 billion.

9: Is this an Outlier?

The numbers are up pretty much everywhere, but is it a genuinely sustainable rise in activity? We all know that “Liberation Day” created mayhem and it continued for some weeks into the survey month, but did it last? Taking the data from those platforms to publish volume figures, activity is down more than 10% in pretty much every case in the last couple of months. This is not to say that it won’t rebound, the chances are it will, but is $9.6 trillion an outlier? The really big leaps in activity were mostly in tariff-related pairs, so if the world does settle down (big emphasis on the ’if’ there), it could be.

Even if it is an outlier, however (and if it is lower in 2028 it won’t be the first time there has been a decline in activity across surveys), we have been given a good reminder of how the FX market represents a critical function in times of stress. Outlier or not, when it was needed the FX world stood up.

10: Corporates are Doing Less…Or Are They?

Something that does stand out from the BIS survey is how, amidst a surge in FX volumes, corporate activity has pretty much flat-lined – overall activity is up by a fraction and in spot, where all the action was in April, it actually dropped, from $150 billion per day to $144 billion.

Options volume did neatly double to $50 billion, so they weren’t oblivious to what was going on clearly, but in general, the sector seemed to steer clear of the mayhem. Only it probably didn’t…

The survey takes data from the Reporting Dealers, but a lot of the regional bank business – from non-reporters – is likely to have come from local corporates who simply don’t register on the turnover surveys. They don’t have the lines with the Reporting Banks, therefore the business gets swallowed up in non-reporting banks section.

So, were the corporates on par with everyone else? Probably not. But they were active in the market, it’s just the fall down one of the cracks in the data.