Section One – Single Dealer Platforms 2026

Last year we noted how little things had changed since Covid when it came to the SDPs, and clearly, another 12 months is not going to make a huge difference. What is becoming notable, however, is how different bank’s use of the platform is evolving. Some continue to offer it as a one-stop shop for clients, while some see it as a product to be distributed beyond the immediate client group – all are heavily focused on ensuring efficient workflow and high-quality analytics.

Last year we observed that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the SDP’s death were greatly exaggerated, and that remains the case, but even now progress is a little mixed, with one small group of players continuing to invest (at different rates it also has to be noted), others hanging in there with existing products that frankly need upgrading, and others seemingly happy to ensure pricing and risk tech is good enough to compete on the multi-dealer/aggregation stage. It is probably no coincidence that the leaders in this field are also banks with significant market share – they also have what could be termed a “captive” audience in extensive, and varied client bases.

For the clients themselves, best execution policies too often tend to lead a firm to an aggregated, hit the best bid/offer, methodology, conveniently ignoring signalling risk and market impact, but some of the smarter ones are still using SDPs, mainly for the trickier deals – deals that, perversely enough, probably offer the LP much more value.

On that note, spot remains an important driver of innovation and volume, but the story here is really shifting to the non-spot world, with more and more algos hosted in a multi-dealer environment. The latter has created quasi algo wheels in FX, but while at face value this looks very much like a negative move, the fact that clients are still selecting their algos based upon analytics delivered by the dealers (and some third-party providers), means they are not, anecdotally at least, being selected on a “round-robin” basis.

In many ways, therefore, this year’s awards look similar to last year’s – and to repeat ourselves, we were horrible children, clearly never shared out our sweets, so we do not rotate to keep people happy. There are, however, some new names on trophies, and we also expect the names at the top to evolve further as some banks come up the ladder thanks to increased investment.

Primarily amongst these, and probably the number one bank to watch, is Deutsche Bank, which has a revamp of Autobahn well underway. It remains relatively early in the reinvestment cycle, so there is plenty more to come, but progress thus far, headlined by HausFX and a different approach to distribution, means interesting – and potentially disruptive things are happening at the bank.

There are a few other evolutions that may start to impact the landscape going forward. Firstly, the growth of third-party, aggregated analytics may threaten one of the real calling cards of the SDP – in-depth, meaningful and accessible data and analytics. Previously, the SDPs had the field to themselves, largely because of the market share held by the institution and, importantly, its SDP. With more data being pushed to independent third-parties, this dominance could be threatened, although we would note that many of the consumers of the data and analytics don’t like the idea of paying for it – especially if the results are similar enough to what they could get on an SDP for free.

The second is, inevitable, the rise of tokenisation and onchain finance. At some stage the precious workflow of buy side firms will have to be disrupted in the name of progress – and that is likely to mean a redesigning of the landscape for the banks. Yes, they can use what will inevitably emerge from the fintech world as their core platform(s), but with so much valuable business through the SDPs, these will also have to be plugged in. Hopefully it is just connectivity work (and that will have to be prioritised, which could knock a few projects down the ladder), but we suspect it will also involve some product and service redesign.

The third factor is, when it comes to value, this is very much becoming a non-spot story. As noted earlier, spot is great, but the value, thanks largely to liquidity availability, is in outrights, swaps, options and, perhaps to a slightly less degree than it was, NDFs. This means a focus on ensuring the pricing – and indeed the analytics – in these products are as good as they already are in spot. We may not hit that sweet spot that enables algos to operate freely, but liquidity in these products will become vitally important, as will the analytics helping clients to discover where it actually is.

On the non-spot subject, one thing we are hearing increasingly from clients is more concentration on their rolls. Thus far, a number of banks have offered rolls under the header “efficiency gain”, but this has hidden what were, according to several sources, less than optimum prices. As competition grows in this space, we sense that the market in “rolls” and similar, will become more commoditised, leading banks having to add value elsewhere – and again this brings us back to liquidity and analytics.

Looking at the last few paragraphs, one might be inclined to ask the question, “does this all finally mean the death of the SDP?” we would argue it most certainly does not. Spot, the multi-dealer world, (often dominated by non-bank players), sucks up a huge amount of the oxygen in our industry, but remains a relatively minor part of the puzzle. Looking at the latest turnover surveys from the UK and US, in the latter just 20% of ADV was traded “indirectly”, through multi-dealer platforms. In the former, 44.5% of ADV is traded through broking systems and platforms, but this includes single dealer platform because the JSC no longer breaks the two out. The last time the two were separated, volumes were equally split, so even if the MDPs have gained share, which looks unlikely given how the public volumes have maintained pace with market growth rather than outstripped it, this ratio would drop to 32%.

So while the multi-dealer environment remains important, and healthy, the sheer scale of business going through the banks should not be forgotten – and that is where the SDP comes in. The rest is noise, but noise that comes with the tightest of margins.

One note for readers, to get a real feel for a platform’s strengths, we recommend reading this in association with last year’s awards – for the sake of brevity we are not repeating our observations from then, but they are available here.

Best FX Platform – JP Morgan

Execute remains the gold standard in single dealer platforms, both in the multi-asset class sense but also, for the purposes of these awards, the FX arena. It is hard to find a weakness in the offering – if we were to publish a top three in every category, JP Morgan would likely be in every one – it is a testament to all-round excellence.

With analytics playing a bigger role in clients’ workflow JP Morgan has responded appropriately by delivering yet more products and services. We noted last year how the bank had seriously enhanced its pre-trade offering through market structure analytics –flexible volume and spread data as well as net flow to name just two – over the past 12 months it has enhanced its FX swap market analytics as an example, but perhaps more importantly, it has started delivering actionable analytics through its alerts framework. Under this, the bank can deliver and highlight axes directly from the analytics platform, that are executable.

The bank has also partnered with its research teams to provide more trade ideas, which are also executable – another example of JP Morgan using its wealth of data and analytics for real use, rather than information. Interestingly, the bank can also deliver more tailored research and trade ideas based upon its analysis of the client’s activity over the previous six months, using replays of previous orders to use one example. The client can execute from these alerts, but still has the ability to adjust execution speed, for example, according to their own outlook on market conditions. Thus, they are well-advised, and provided with all the data and analytics they need, but retain independence over how they act.

Another addition over the past year is an enhanced solution for dealing with capital and liquidity constraints brought about by regulation. Clients can convert OTC positions into futures with an immediate offsetting order, meaning they retain access to the deepest liquidity in OTC markets, but can alleviate capital pressures.

Perhaps the most significant shift in FX terms at least, on Execute, has been the continued filling of what was a small gap that existed in FX options. Last year JPM added staging technology, split and allocation services, as well as QR codes for sharing strategies with clients. This year, trade ideas, as noted, have been more embedded in the options workflow, and the range of structured products has been expanded. An FX options lifecycle blotter is also live and the bank has increased its use of NLP to populate tickets from chats. Looking ahead, the scheduler in structured products also fills a gap, and will do so further as more products are added.

As well as the above JPM has also added more risk graphics to Execute for clients’ FX options trades and portfolios and connected this to the pricing engine for straight-through trading. Clients can also access Microsoft’s Co-Pilot on their screens, bringing AI to the options workflow via APIs.

AI has also been introduced to the mobile app, with a classic or AI search function available, and the research feed can be customised, the bank is also deploying the technology widely internally ahead of more client-facing applications – select clients are also involved in the product generation process. The initial deployment is focused on the monitoring of orders as well as the booking of end-of-day reports.

It has been noted before that getting to the top of the ladder can be easy – staying there is hard, and the fact that Execute has had such a sustained period at the top is testament to JP Morgan’s continued investment, thoughtful development programmes and, frankly, its overall excellence.

The difference between winners and their peers in many areas of these awards can be minute, as we wrote earlier, but it is the all-round excellence of Execute that keeps JP Morgan in front – put simply, it is hard to find a weakness in the platform.

Best FX Options Platform – Goldman Sachs

Marquee, as a single dealer platform, is something of a sleeper – it has always been excellent, but to the wider world, probably because it is proprietary like all platforms, it is less spoken about. Goldman clients, however, rave about it – and we can see why. It just looks and feels like a platform made by people who trade, or plan trades, for people who do the same.

One of the notable evolutions of Marquee over the past decade has been the growth in analytical tools – and while these stretch across the markets, they are at the heart of the bank winning this award. As one user noted, “options is all about the pre-trade”, adding, to paraphrase, the rest is all processing! The driver of the pre-trade (and post-trade when it comes to risk management it should be noted), are analytics.

It can be difficult to differentiate oneself in this field – both options and analytics – because, as we have noted before, the typical user group exist in a quasi “Fenics” world, where the pricing and execution look and feel has barely changed in three decades. Goldman did it in last year’s awards, and does it again this year, through its Visual Structuring tool.

The use of NLP in Visual Structuring has increased, more data and information has also been added around market and non-market events. Users highlighted how, by hovering over the trade or structure they get the micro details. Ideas or structures can be shared easily for collaboration and the bank has ensured it has stayed in the race by adding more exotic products to the platforms.

The product has been made even more interactive in terms of how users can conduct “what-if” analysis, they are able to plot the contours of P&L depending upon where the market is trading, within this.

Visual Structuring is also mobile-friendly, unsurprisingly perhaps given it was built with such a scenario in mind. Users can prompt operations by touch screen or a swipe of the finger, providing a good user experience, but easier collaboration. Ideas can be shared remotely through the normal mediums, but can also be carried into a client meeting or intra-desk.

We noted last year that visualisation was much more than a gimmick – and that is unlikely to change until such time as options are commoditised and 90% automated. Even then, we suspect, the real value will be in the 10% of trades that require a “touch”. If that is indeed the case, then Goldman established a leadership position a few years ago, and is working hard to ensure it doesn’t relinquish it.

Best Emerging Markets Platform – Citi

Probably the big story from Citi in last year’s awards was the continued journey towards a more-connected Velocity – that work continued over the past year; this year’s theme may be leaning into the bank’s payments infrastructure and, more importantly, network to deploy the platform. This has seen Citi build AI into more processes, it has also seen it fully-embrace the stablecoin world with a host of PoCs and a few live initiatives.

A lot of this work feeds into an area where Citi has always been very strong – emerging markets. Being on the ground locally in so many markets always helps of course – but what is so impressive is how Citi has embedded Velocity, or parts of it, into so many areas of the business. It is becoming a backbone of the markets and services businesses.

What strikes the user so much with Velocity is how it is excellent in all areas of the FX experience – and how that all translates into emerging markets. The core remains Pulse, originally the bank’s corporate platform that has now been embedded into so many other areas. Citi is fortunate that the heritage of Pulse was very much about delivering a product that could be tailored to the often-unique demands of local markets – this means not only can it add a market as soon as the regulatory environment is outlined, but it can also adjust nearly on-the-fly, to what are often regs that change weekly.

The need to support so many different markets with their own individual characteristics means the sheer scale of Velocity can be intimidating, but thanks to work to improve the user experience, navigating the platform has become much easier – allowing the bank to do what it does best – deliver high-quality services across markets, with the added bonus of true local expertise.

Best Execution Award – JP Morgan

Amidst what remains a very good platform overall, Goldman Sachs has built out a superb FX options offering. In a way this is not a surprise – the bank has always been strong there and was one of the first innovators in the space back in the early 2000s with its pricing application that looked like an app most traders were using, but came with extra functionality.

Differentiating in FX options can be very difficult in the third decade of the century – most products are covered by the top group of players, and users’ preference for the familiar pricing grid style means pushing too far from the mean can be challenging. Goldman has managed it, however, by understanding one aspect of the FX options workflow – the vast majority of it takes place pre-trade. Execution remains critical, of course, but that often occurs after hours, maybe even days, of analysis.

This is where the bank’s Visual Structuring tool comes in, it is built for idea generation and risk management – probably the two most important parts of an FX option trader’s day-to-day work. Launched in 2022, the product has been enhanced with the addition of NLP capabilities, it also now incorporates more information, specifically around market events, to help users better understand their books.

Tapping into one of the early functions of Marquee, users can also hover over the trade or structure to get the micro details – something that is especially useful for more complex products. Ideas or structures can be shared easily for collaboration and the banks has ensured it has stayed in the race by adding more exotic products to the platforms.

For those that prefer the old-fashioned way of trading and managing option books, this is available through blotters, but the real differentiator here is Visual Structuring which is mobile friendly to the degree that it was built with such a scenario in mind. Users can prompt operations by touch screen or a swipe of the finger, meaning not only a more modern feel, but also much easier collaboration – rather than send countless emails, just pick up a tablet and walk over to discuss the details.

Visualisation is becoming more important in FX analytics generally, and will remain so until such time as even FX options is a fully-automated process. Until that day, however, the standard in the field is Goldman Sachs – in a very competitive field it has pushed ahead with a creative, innovative, and user-friendly product.

Workflow Award – Deutsche Bank

Finally, the observant reader might note, the pattern of award winners has changed from last year – and it is no surprise that Deutsche Bank is the first to disrupt the pattern. Autobahn was a great platform in its day, but the bank has recognised there was a period of under-investment that is now being rectified, and that it needs updating. That work is being done in a thoughtful manner, headlined by a winner in these awards last year, HausFX.

This year’s award, however is for the workflow tools across the e-FX business, there is still more to do for Autobahn generally, but thus far the focus has very much been about reducing or removing friction from the workflow process.

Deutsche has achieved this initially through simplification and more tailored workflow solutions, for example for corporates, as well as financial institutions in the aforementioned HausFX. The bank is also taking a slightly different approach by delivering its tools via third-party platforms – gone are the days when Deutsche’s FX business was an in-house delivery only, this means it has broadened exposure to products like DBHedge and its options platform.

There is now one entry point for all services, and the support function for clients is now in the front office once again – a small but important detail when it comes to helping clients maintain efficient workflow.

The overall impression of Deutsche Bank’s e-FX journey, and this was reinforced by feedback from users, is that the story is effectively just starting, or, to be more accurate, renewing. That definitely makes the bank one to watch as Autobahn builds to reflect the quality of overall service provided by the bank. As more products are enhanced across the board, they will be supported by a workflow framework that makes them easy to integrate and roll out – and that makes Autobahn a very interesting contender over the next year or two.

Best Real Money Platform

As noted into our introduction, there was demand after last year’s awards to provide more granularity, specifically in terms of client segments. This is obviously a fluid concept – where does real money end and hedge fund money start for example? – but allowing for some crossover, we will start with the real money segment.

This part of the business has historically been about workflow and administration, with some honourable exceptions, FX has not figured highly in some firms’ plans, but that is changing. As more funds start to pay attention to their FX requirements, they will demand more sophisticated tools and services, and that puts, perhaps more clients in play.

That said, this remains a very conservative segment, where existing providers often have to do something wrong to be seriously challenged, however more doors are opening to different providers, if they are ready to take the step.

If they are, however, they will have to get around one of the giants in this space, State Street. We should stress, this award is not about FX Connect, while it may be owned by the bank, it is a different business for our purposes, but the fact that there is easy connectivity and expertise “in-house” clearly helps.

Rather, this award is about how the bank has taken what were widely recognised as excellent administrative products and services, and overlaid them with great execution tools. We discuss the analytics elsewhere in this article, but the bank has clearly tapped into its expertise and sweet spot with real money to develop a set of algo execution tools that not only meet their requirements, but on occasion exceed them, providing clients customised tools or strategies where required.

It serves to highlight how State Street has upped its game with its core client base that the advances in its algo suite put it into contention for our best algos award, something that probably was not on the horizon just a couple of year ago. The portfolio parameterisation tools are excellent, as is the ability to front load (or otherwise) the order execution path by modelling the efficient frontier. Equally, the platform streams a live price for the balance of an execution, as well as analysis as to how such a trade would impact their final outcome.

The real money world has become a much more competitive field for FX banks over the past few years, thanks to customers showing more interest in FX and more banks seeing the value of adding that type of flow to the franchise. The good news is that State Street has responded and placed itself at the forefront of service providers, through innovation and the clever integration of more sophisticated execution tools.

Best Hedge Fund Platform

We have named this after hedge funds, but the reality is this award is judged through a trader’s eyes, and could equally apply to a dealer sitting in any type of institution. What nails it for Goldman Sachs is that Marquee has clearly been built over the years with heavy input from people in the trading business.

This is going to be a brief write up, mainly because two of the key factors in it have been highlighted in the options and algo categories, but in addition to the great analytics and workflow tools for traders, Marquee also delivers a really good trading experience for the manual trader. The screen is sharp, there is plenty of information in the dealing page without making it too cluttered – the whole experience is just a good one for the human trader.

Equally, for systematic funds, or traders hungry for raw data to use in their own models, this is available, but alongside it is the ability to create trade ideas, and introduce parameters on screen, meaning they don’t have to build their own analytical tools.

Marquee has always had the feel of a platform designed for traders by traders – this is only reinforced by the notable number of enhancements over the past year.

Best Corporate Platform

It is quite something how Citi has taken the workflow tools and product ideas from Pulse, its corporate platform from a decade or more ago, and embedded it across the franchise. This was a smart move, because when one looks at a great number of custody clients in particular, they all operate in a similar fashion to corporates.

For the latter, however, Citi continues to build what is truly a universal franchise, you walk away form a session on Pulse feeling that if they had a market on Mars, and there were restrictions or rules around how you accessed it, Citi would have a solution. This is because of one of the beauties of the platform – its repeatability.

This means that while so many local markets have their own nuances, the user on Velocity/Pulse gets one experience beyond the specific requirements of the local market. Frankly, this is a corporate platform that only a bank the size of Citi with its global footprint could pull off successfully, there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make the user experience a smooth one.

From passive currency overlay tools to access to pricing at weekends, through easy and automated onboarding processes that takes minutes rather than days (or weeks at some stage in the past!), the platform offers the corporate everything. The bank has also built on its SAP joint venture to boost its attractiveness to large corporates, there is also the continued work to bring the Markets business closer to the securities and treasury services units.

Citi knows it has a valuable calling card in its local markets franchise and has built a platform to deliver efficiency to those corporates operating in those markets. It is also nicely tapped into the “new economy” with tools like Instant FX for online retailers. It is also making sure it is at the table as the industry explores, tests, and roll out new technology such as stablecoins – something else that will impact the corporate world.

Ultimately, perhaps, what should be of concern to Citi’s competitors, is how these tools and services translate very easily into custody – especially as investors increasingly chase emerging market returns. Going forward, this platform will be delivering the same excellence to a wider group of clients.

Best FX Swaps Platform – UBS

Neo is a platform that delivers on so many levels, and its build means that the bank has been able to easily withstand what could have been a very disruptive event in the form of the Credit Suisse takeover. Instead of disruption, however, what we have got is a platform that is integrating the best aspects of the CS platform, to ensure not only that its fills the odd gap (and we could question if they even existed) but also ensure client loyalty.

Over the past year the bank has improved its order workflow – including making it quicker – it is also increasing its quote thresholds in terms of size and building even more automation into what was already one of the most automated post-trade houses on the street.

Over the last year the bank has added connectivity to LSEG FX’ Forwards First Fixing, this provides another avenue for clients already spoilt for choice with the rich graphics around the run and enhanced pricing capabilities across the board.

UBS continues to deliver axes to defined clients based upon historical analysis or relationship management guidance alongside its streaming swaps prices – something that sets the SDP apart compared to the MDP, as we noted last year, its STIR analytics product, a pretty unique offering built by a quant trader for the STIR trading desk – continues to attract rave reviews from users.

STIR analytics breaks down a price into its component parts to assist traders with the timing of their execution and identify existing trends in the market, as well as to predict price action around market events. The data is very granular and updated by UBS’ traders globally marking the curve. This effectively means live data for users of Neo in STIR markets, it also includes hard-to-get data, such as with the impact of month- or quarter-ends.

The level of granularity and the depth of data involved is tremendous – and Neo’s build means users can stay on the surface, or dive to great depths. The heatmap can be populated by currency, by real-time or look back, one click on a tenor in a pair feeds a graph below that provides details of historical performance.

OIS analytics remain part of the package, showing the ‘priced in’ component ahead of central bank meetings, a panel also shows relative value for single or multiple currencies across the curve. Over the past year the bank has added customer tenors.

With uncertainty continuing over the path of interest rates (or more pertinently interest rate differentials) analytics such as those provided by UBS are invaluable. The fact that they exist in such a “straight-through” environment where moving from trade idea to execution is so easy, just makes it even better.

Best Algos – Goldman Sachs

In a very competitive field, Goldman has edged ahead of the field by borrowing ideas from another part of its business – FX options – and embedding them in the algo product suite. This award is not about whose algo operates best – that is a very fluid concept at the best of times – rather it is about who allies effective execution tools with great analytics.

So, like the FX options platform, the visual experience on Marquee for algo users is outstanding, and something execution experts and traders will probably drool over – some hedge fund users we spoke to certainly did! The analytics are flexible, configurable and innovative and provide, frankly, a visual solution to a problem of selecting the parameters of an impending execution. This just makes the decision making on the execution path smarter.

Goldman has long offered basket algos, and continues to do so, its proprietary dynamic algos are also highly thought of.

Ultimately, however, like the FX options piece, this is about the visualisation tools, they just seem different and are very user friendly. The algo world, when it comes to execution, is a highly-automated place where the human rarely interacts. Pre-trade, however, is a different matter, and it is here that Goldman Sachs scores so highly.

The workflow is smooth and easy, users are able to save their processes for audit (and replication), and “in-flight:” analysis is outstanding, showing a rage of likely outcomes depending upon how the user may want to interact. This makes it a valuable tool for those clients who still like to retain some control over their execution (a growing group we might note). It’s a competitive space, but at the moment, Goldman Sachs has an edge.

Best Research – UBS

This is another award that was requested by readers and users, which was something of a surprise if we are being honest, because research, especially in a world in which the transmission of data has never been easier, was at risk of growing so many woods, we couldn’t see the trees!

Again, this is not about the quality of the research or trade ideas – that is for customers to vote upon with their business – rather it is about ease of delivery, and ensuring the right information gets to the right people. This is where UBS’ Neo has long had an advantage because of the “social” nature of its build. It is made for idea generation and sharing.

The analytics are part of the package of course, but again, it is hard to differentiate when the raw data is coming from a few sources (the franchise is probably the only real differentiator), which means it comes down to trade ideas, and, as far as UBS is concerned, extending this into existing trades.

While, at a top level, we think about trade ideas as putting a new position or hedge on, the reality is, a great number of hedges can be adjusted as markets move – especially in a time, such as now, with so many mini-spikes and troughs. Most clients are unable to keep up with these moves and any opportunity that may arise to improve their hedging programme, but UBS is doing it for them.

Not only does the platform alert clients to a potential restructuring opportunity, it allows them to, if they wish, “what-if” the idea and nuance it accordingly. Scenario analysis is part of the solution for those with more time, but the real beauty in the solution is how easy it is to trade from the idea generation tool – again, this is part of the genius of the Neo design.

We have already mentioned UBS’s excellent STIR analytics, with this it has, naturally, great option analytics, but where research genuinely helps a client is by saving, or making, them money. A great number of clients don’t want to take a punt on the markets but they do have to hedge, and they wish to do it in the most efficient way possible. UBS provides all this, but on top, it has a quick and easy solution for identifying ways to save even more money – and that is invaluable.

Best FX Prime Brokerage – NatWest Markets

This is another repeat winner and as we noted last year, NatWest has emerged from the pack over the past decade to establish a leadership position in FXPB, thanks to its ability to support a broad church of client types.

While the analytics and UI remain great, the real core of this award remains NatWest’s human touch – its global client service teams were highlighted by several users we spoke to. The graphics have been improved over the past few years to provide a better top level view of KPIs, but the more granular data is still available for those that need it – as many businesses do. The cash-flow projections and settlement ladders remain popular, with the same ability to drill down, and over the past year the bank has added support for Metals, in spot, forwards and options, and has broadened its offering to make it more attractive to real money clients.

The bank has also helped clients reduce costs by an internalisation programme that aggregates the risk, and looking ahead it is looking closely at the benefits of tokenisation. All-in-all, NatWest looks eager to maintain its leadership position in FXPB and the innovative mindset permeating the business, overlaid with that human factor, means it is hard to bet against them remaining so.

Product of the Year – Omnia Exchange from LMAX Group

The column inches expended on how FX integrates with crypto and vice versa would probably stretch around the equator a few times, but the reality is, little has been actually done to make it happen. It’s not unlike the multi-asset class dream that first demerged at the start of the century when we were all building trading platforms in different asset classes – the desire is probably there, but the amount of work that needs to happen to make it a success was too much for many.

Earlier this year, however, a concrete step was taken by LMAX Group when it created Omnia Exchange, an infrastructure layer that will allow participants to trade any asset, at any time, via a single API.

Any pair of assets can be traded against each other on a 24/7 basis with no restriction on size or type, and users can send value across borders “as easily as sending a message”. The new exchange offers open access to liquidity and pricing and users are able to settle trades either on traditional rails, or instantly on the blockchain.
Omnia simplifies trading and payment complexity, unlocks capital and reduces transaction costs across a wide range of industries from payment providers, retail finance and wealth managers to mobile networks, wallets, custodians and social platforms. Users of the new infrastructure, by embedding instant settlement and institutional-grade liquidity directly into their ecosystems, can identify new revenue streams, offer seamless user experiences and participate fully in the world’s most efficient markets.

So, while we stress that this award is not about predicting success, rather it is about a great idea that has an equally great chance of success, Omnia Exchange does provide us with a glimpse into the future. The merging of infrastructure and markets in crypto and FX – here it has already happened.

The Digital Assets/FX Crossover Award – LMAX Exchange

Continuing on a theme from our Product of the Year, our award for the firm that is leading the way in bringing the digital assets and FX worlds closer together.

This year the competition has been hotter than ever, especially as some crypto giants seek access to FX, but thus far a great number of these efforts have been aimed at the retail/small institutional space – the reason LMAX Group wins for a second year is that it is bringing the worlds together at a true institutional level.

A big part of this may be how several potential competitors are trying to adapt crypto technology and methods to the FX world, whereas LMAX has largely headed in the opposite direction, using its FX pedigree to help drive its digital assets product set.

We noted last year that LMAX had a first-mover advantage in the FX/crypto space, but that this does not guarantee success; that still holds, but the familiarity on the part of the players that the crypto world really wants onboard, with the platform, means when it happens, it will likely start here.

It is already happening, of course, over the past year, LMAX became the first firm to join Standard Chartered’s crypto custody platform – it also executed the first crypto trade with that bank as the prime broker. It is hard to see better evidence of the institutional push into crypto than those two events. The firm has also launched the aforementioned Omnia Exchange, and unveiled Kiosk, a solution that allows users to deposit digital assets and use them as collateral across the firm’s full product suite, including spot FX, precious metals, digital assets, CFDs and perps.

Going forward, it is likely that some involved in the crypto world will become more embedded in FX, but the reality is that many of the major LPs in particular are already there. The opposite is not true, however, and by providing a singular user experience across both asset classes LMAX is providing the place for banks and other major institutions to get their feet wet in crypto.