Northern Trust Latest to Establish Singapore e-FX Presence
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: April 16, 2021
Northern Trust has joined a growing number of banks to establish an e-FX pricing engine in Singapore. As was the case with many of the other institutions to connect to SG1, Northern Trust did so in partnership with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
It will be the bank’s first Asian e-FX engine and comes during a period of growth that saw it buy FX algorithmic, aggregation and TCA provider Bex as well as sign an agreement to partner with Lumint Corporation to enhance the bank’s machine learning tools.
“Singapore is a key FX centre for Northern Trust and financial markets globally,” says John Turney, head of global foreign exchange at Northern Trust Capital Markets. “Establishing a regional e-FX pricing engine in Singapore will enhance the service provided by our Singapore-based FX desk and complements our continued expansion of FX solutions across Asia-Pacific including currency management and Complete FX.”
Yen Leng Ong, country executive for south-east Asia at Northern Trust, adds, “The launch of our e-FX platform in Singapore demonstrates our continued commitment to deliver a broad range of sophisticated solutions to our clients in Asia-Pacific. We are excited to be a part of this joint initiative with MAS which will further develop the FX market ecosystem in Singapore, and Asia as a whole. Co-locating the pricing engine with the trading desk in Singapore, regional market participants will benefit from improved speed and enhanced pricing discovery, as well as increasingly timely and efficient execution.”
Meanwhile, Lim Cheng Khai, executive director for financial markets development at MAS says, “The addition of Northern Trust to our FX e-trading infrastructure will strengthen our proposition to provide efficient price discovery and trade execution to market participants in the region, and enable Northern Trust to continue to bring market leading capabilities to its clients. It also bears strong testimony to Singapore’s proposition as a global FX centre in the Asian time zone.”
