The Full FX Awards 2025

Welcome to the inaugural Full FX Awards, where we seek to recognise outstanding e-FX technology. These awards have initially been driven by user feedback, augmented by our own observations, and will no doubt evolve over the coming years as that feedback continues.

The awards have two sections – single dealer platforms and technology from the vendor world – both of which have their own characteristics. For the SDPs, thanks to it being easier to ‘compare apples with apples’, we have sought feedback from users and then taken our own look at those products and platforms highlighted. As we shall explain in our review of the SDPs, we have not looked at every offering in this first year, preferring instead to be guided by the aforementioned users, to where we think new work has been done.

For the vendor world, the sheer breadth and scale of offerings means it is unfeasible to look at everything, therefore we have focused on innovative launches from the past 18 months. It should be stressed that here we have focused upon product launches that are interesting and either shift the dynamic of that segment of the market, or solve an existing problem.

While the SDP awards are very much aimed at how clients would view the various platforms, the vendor awards are also about how a launch helps the individual company (or companies) concerned – hence their more subjective nature.

We wanted to make these awards different to most of those of offer currently – not only can businesses notpitch for an award, none were notified of our feedback process when creating our quasi short-list of platforms and products to look at. Equally, this is not an exercise in goodwill – we are conscious of keeping the awards to a suitable, and limited, number and that means that awards are thin on the ground and have to be earned. We are not interested in a list that includes, for example, “the best bank platform beginning with ‘A’ and so on…”

It should be stressed that the differences between platforms can be minimal, but with each winner we have tried to identify one or more differentiators – places where the provider really stands out.

Finally, a few words about why we are doing awards. We have been asked about SDP reviews and awards for most of the nearly-five years we have been operating, but wanted to ensure that we had all of; sufficient feedback from users, the appropriate gravitas from being in publication for long enough; and time for the banks to actually build something post-Covid. The model we were most asked about was that we used at Profit & Loss over the years, so we have taken aspects of that process into The Full FX Awards, but have trimmed down the number of prizes severely.

We are also doing this because, frankly, we feel there is a gap in the industry. We still think there is space for an independent review of the platforms that involves actually visiting the banks and really getting into the weeds of what they offer. Equally, while this year we have limited our review, going forward the idea is to expand it – hopefully based upon further user feedback resulting from these inaugural awards – to include institutions of all shapes and sizes. When it comes to good ideas and innovation, big is not always better – although it has to be acknowledged that budgets play a huge role.

With that laid out, therefore, please enjoy the inaugural Full FX (e)FX awards.