SGX FX has clinched the highly sought-after “Best FX Exchange” and “Best FX Clearing House” awards at the 6^th annual FX Markets Asia Awards recognising the best-in-class across the foreign exchange (FX) industry in the Asia-Pacific region.

This is the sixth consecutive year that SGX FX has been named Asia's best FX exchange, and the fourth time it has been recognised as the best FX clearing house in Asia. The award judges cited SGX FX’s innovative and diverse solutions demonstrating its strong customer focus, as well as its leadership in helping customers navigate changing global regulations and derivatives markets.

Global markets in 2022 saw periods of extreme volatility which added pressure on collateral margins for market participants. Regulatory developments such as the Basel III rollout of Standardised Approach for Counterparty Credit Risk (SA-CCR) and the final Phase 6 of Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) also came into full force last year, driving more over-the-counter (OTC) trading to on-exchange central clearing as global investors sought to enhance initial margin efficiencies and lower capital and risk weights.

SGX FX – which operates the world’s largest and most liquid Asian FX futures exchange – has been the go-to venue in this environment, offering deep liquidity in major Asian currency pairs and one of the longest derivatives trading hours. Close to 40% of SGX FX futures are traded during European and U.S. hours. In 2022, more participants sought liquidity on SGX FX, solidifying its leadership in CNH, INR, SGD, KRW and TWD futures.

Since its expansion into the OTC FX market with the acquisition of BidFX and MaxxTrader, SGX FX is now the only FX futures exchange in Asia with an OTC FX trading venue and a full technology stack that caters to workflow electronification and automation. In September 2022, it launched SGX CurrencyNode, an FX electronic communication network that connects global participants anonymously to unique and deep OTC FX liquidity pools.

Lee Beng Hong, Senior Managing Director, Head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities at SGX Group, said, “We are honoured to receive these prestigious accolades which recognise our leadership through our pioneering products, highly automated trade processing system, and robust compliance and regulatory framework. Our strengths across listed and OTC FX markets have led to more global market participants turning to us to risk-manage and trade major currencies across FX instruments. As we bring the OTC FX and futures worlds closer, our goal is to develop more trusted and efficient solutions to meet the FX ecosystem’s needs.”

KC Lam, Global Head of FX & Rates, SGX Group, added, “Liquidity is critical in volatile markets. Traders rely on SGX FX for consistent and transparent price formation, our deep liquidity where over 95% of our FX futures volume are traded electronically, low execution costs with deep order books, and strong support for different trading protocols like CLOB (central limit order book) and block trading. We are also pleased to see that SGX USD/CNH Futures are increasingly referenced as a source of price formation for many exchanges and OTC FX participants.”

For the first three months of 2023, total trading volume of SGX FX futures reached close to US$600 billion, more than a quarter of the record volume of over US$2 trillion achieved in 2022. Total traded volume of SGX USD/CNH Futures in the first quarter of this year increased by over 70% year-on-year to about 4.9 million contracts, with a record-high average daily volume (ADV) of US$9.5 billion in notional terms in March. SGX INR/USD Futures and SGX KRW/USD Futures also saw positive momentum with aggregate trading volumes in notional terms for the three months crossing US$92 billion and US$10 billion, respectively.