Deutsche Bank set to launch fourth e-FX hub in Singapore

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
12th June 2020

Deutsche Bank is set to launch its fourth electronic foreign exchange (e-FX) hub in Singapore with the help of the country’s financial regulator – the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

The bank considers success in Asia “critical” for its global business

The hub will add to the bank’s three others in New York, London and Tokyo. The newest hub in Singapore will allow firms based in the country to execute FX transactions with less latency, which the bank says will improve on local price transparency and liquidity.

“Given the substantial increase in demand for Asia currency e-FX we have seen in the past five years, growing client sophistication in e-FX trading, and the MAS’ focus on further developing the leading FX centre in the region, hubbing this activity in Singapore makes perfect sense,” says David Lynne, Deutsche Bank’s Asia-Pacific (APAC) head of fixed income, currencies, and corporate bank.

The hub, which expands the bank’s investments in its Singapore infrastructure, will be developed and staffed locally.

Deutsche says Asia’s markets are “high growth but complex”, and intends for the new hub to “drive digital real-time treasury and open banking from Singapore into payment corridors across the region and globally”.

The German lender’s group APAC CEO, Werner Steinmüller, told The Edge Financial Daily in December that the bank considers success in Asia “critical” for its global business, and that the ultimate goal is to have APAC contributing somewhere in the range of 25% to 30% to total revenues, similar to the share of its US business.

During the coronavirus, the bank has backed its allocation of capital to its investment banking division, which has its largest operations in the US.

Despite holding an ever-stretched balance sheet, Deutsche’s regional chief executive Christiana Riley told the Financial Times earlier this month: “We don’t think about this as a zero-sum game, [that] you’re either supporting small businesses and retail customers in Germany or supporting our US corporate and institutional clients.”