FX house of the year, Australia – ANZ

ANZ secures FX house of the year, Australia award

ANZ’s increased adoption of digital execution for currency trading and its deep focus on internalisation is helping the bank steer customers through the uncertain waters of 2021, characterised by plunging volatility, partial lockdowns and remote working.

As the Covid-19 pandemic lingers, ANZ’s flair for identifying customer trends and staying at the forefront of change has helped it secure the FX Markets FX house of the year, Australia award for the fourth year in a row.

Timothy Moloney, head of financial institutions at ANZ, says: “2020 and 2021 have been like chalk and cheese when you compare market volatility levels as a function of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, customer execution trends have remained consistent. 

“In 2020, we saw an accelerated adoption of digital execution as customers shifted from working in the office to working from home. In 2021, as customers returned to the office, the desire to execute digitally hasn’t tapered.”

ANZ’s extensive application programming interface distribution network has allowed it to keep serving customers across the Asia-Pacific region (Apac) via their channel of choice. As the pandemic rumbles on, volatility has noticeably subsided; one of the main challenges this year with lower volatility has been patchy liquidity. 

To that end, ANZ has focused on internalising flows to get the edge over competitors on its core competencies – the Australian and New Zealand dollars, and deliverable Asian currencies – utilising correlated hedging capabilities and leveraging its diverse customer base. Luke Marriott, head of electronic fixed income, currencies and commodities at ANZ, says: “We applied this approach across all of our products – spot, forwards, swaps and options. As a result, our customers have had access to deeper liquidity pools for Apac currencies.”

ANZ has shown itself to be a leader of change. In December, it became the first Apac bank to settle all 18 currencies on Continuous Linked Settlements to help mitigate settlement risk, an increasing concern for banks and regulators. Furthermore, the FX team drove the speedy approval of ANZ’s Sustainability Linked Derivatives (SLDs), a tool to set ambitious sustainability performance targets and incentivise the bank’s customers to meet these targets. SLDs have been approved for all FX forwards and options, as well as for interest rate swaps and cross currency swaps. 

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