Manwaring New Co-Vice Chair of GFXC as Proportionality Tool Prepared

Simon Manwaring, global head of trading and sales at NatWest Markets, has been named as the new co-vice chair of the Global Foreign Exchange Committee (GFXC). He succeeds Standard Bank’s Richard de Roos, who has completed his two-year term in the role.

Manwaring joined the Royal Bank of Scotland at the end of 2013 in the role of global head of FX options and electronic trading and was promoted to head global FX in 2016. He started his career in FX at JP Morgan in 1994 and worked at the bank for 11 years before moving to first Bank of America and then HSBC to head up FX options. In 2011 he moved to Santander as global head of FX, before the shift to RBS.

“It is a great honour for me to continue to bring the sell-side perspective to the GFXC leadership structure, and to serve together with the chair, Andréa Maechler of the Swiss National Bank, and my colleague from the buy side, Stefanie Holtze-Jen of Deutsche Bank,” Manwaring says in a statement.

Manwaring’s appointment was confirmed at the latest GFXC semi-annual meeting, which was held by teleconference. At the meeting, the committee agreed to commission a digital proportionality tool to support those market participants with less complex activities adopt and adhere to the Code.

The new tool will be made publicly available on the GFXC website in 2023, and will organise the 55 FX Global Code Principles based on a participant’s role in the FX market. The intention of the tool is to streamline the adherence process, the GFXC says, adding that a wide range of market participants saw it as a useful mechanism for facilitating adherence. “This tool enables those market participants with less complex activities in the FX market to focus their adherence efforts on the Principles most relevant to them,” explains de Roos, who led the working group that developed to tool.

 “Since the update of the Code in July 2021, more than 80 market participants have newly signed up, in addition to the many others who have refreshed their earlier statement,” adds Maechler. “I am convinced that the Digital Proportionality Tool will attract more new signatories to the Code, especially from the still underrepresented buy side community.”

As suggested by those comments, the GFXC is hoping that a more focused approach to the buy side will help drive adoption in that sector. Thus far, while several major asset managers have adopted and adhered to the Code, a large number have not, either because their FX activities are relatively minor aspects of their business or because they don’t have the resources to adopt. By releasing the proportionality tool, it is hoped the process to adopt will be simplified and allow more firms to dedicate resources to committing.

Also at the GFXC meeting, Holtze-Jen, head of a second working group on adherence, presented a three-pillar approach to raising motivation for adherence. These include increased visibility of the Code by partnering with industry groups and enhancing Code education and training (ACI FMA presented at the meeting on its ELAC tool). “Creating tangible benefits and lowering barriers to adherence for the buy side are key for further anchoring the Code in the FX market,” Holtze-Jen observed.

The opportunity to partner with rating agencies to link the Code to the “G” (governance) in ESG principles was also discussed, as was the need to engage more fully on data availability. The committee agreed to pick up the discussion on data availability at its June 2023 meeting with the view of including this topic in the next review of the Code.

The cost aspect of data was not within the remit of the GFXC, it noted, but the Committee’s considerations could include enhanced transparency on what happens to user-generated trade data, improved data access to benchmark execution of FX derivative transactions, and greater transparency of trade execution data in case of delegated execution.