Lloyds Deploys BNP’s Execution Algos
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: June 3, 2025
Lloyds has announced a partnership with BNP Paribas to deploy the latter’s FX execution algorithms to its corporate and financial institution clients.
The agreement sees Lloyds’ clients gain access to BNP’s full algo technology stack, which includes flexible execution strategies tailored to individual trading objectives. This will allow users to define strategies aligned with their risk appetite, supported by interactive features such as limit pricing and start/stop times. Clients can amend, pause, resume, or cancel orders mid-execution, while benefiting from real-time analytics, comprehensive TCA reporting, and dedicated user support.
Noting that execution algos represent a growing share of spot volumes, particularly among buy-side participants, Lloyds says the algo suite can provide its clients with detailed analytics and help support best execution, while executing trades more efficiently, in a fully-transparent environment.
“This partnership marks a significant milestone in our commitment to continually invest in enhancing our clients’ experience,” says Rob Hale, head of financial markets at Lloyds. “As FX market and risk dynamics shift, integrating algorithmic execution technology into our Lloyds platform ensures we continue to offer FX solutions to meet the needs of our clients.”
Asif Razaq, global head of FX automated client execution at BNP Paribas, adds, “We’re excited to partner with Lloyds and to expand the availability of next generation algorithms to a new group of clients. We are actively expanding our footprint using exclusive offerings in target markets as we continue to develop and refine our platform.”
The Full FX View
Although the past few years has seen an increasingly noisy focus on non-bank firms seeking to partner with regional and specialist banks, very quietly, the major banks have themselves been moving in the same direction.
While this looks very much like a straightforward white label arrangement – albeit for a specific and specialised area of the FX business – it is part of a wider effort that has seen banks like JP Morgan, and most recently Deutsche Bank with its Haus FX, also seek to become technology partners with their lower tier brethren.
It will be interesting to see how the deal works out – bank partnerships with non-bank firms have a chequered history, and bank-to-bank deals have succeeded, but not always for very long. What is different here, obviously, is that Lloyds is adding a particular string to its bow with BNP’s FX algos, which have historically been very good, whereas other partnerships have been about liquidity – an altogether more contentious area.
Performance will be critical in this deal, notably, and assuming clients will deal in the name of Lloyds, can the business be sufficiently masked? There is a lot of technology deployed in the market sniffing out orders and while BNP can veil at least some of its algo execution strategies with the bank’s day-to-day business, the question will be can Lloyds, which is a smaller player generally on the world FX stage? Alongside its status in the FX market, BNP is also in a position to internalise at least some of the flow its sees from its algo clients (the business is walled off, but the trading desks are able to post interest that the algos can hit), can Lloyds?
Overall though, a deal like this makes sense, Lloyds gets access to a really good set of execution strategies and all the support analytics that surround it, while BNP adds a fee stream to its business, that, presumably, help maintain and enhance the service. It could also, if successful, open the doors to other deals for BNP, which would itself be interesting in the context of non-bank firms eyeing this segment of the market.
