Best FX prime broker – NatWest Markets

NatWest Markets’ flexible and robust solutions secure it the Best FX Prime Broker Award 

The long-established flexibility, breadth and depth, and robustness of NatWest Markets’ FX prime brokerage (FXPB) operations across Asia were the keys to it meeting the extreme market challenges posed during the height of the Covid‑19 pandemic in 2020. Already known for the comprehensive range of its FXPB product suite, including spot, forwards, non-deliverable forwards, and vanilla and exotic (digital/barrier) options across more than 60 currency pairs, NatWest Markets FXPB was further able to utilise its experience in offering alternative and non-bank liquidity in addition to traditional liquidity sources to clients to enable them to best manage their FX needs throughout last year. 

“What we aim to offer is best-in-class market access, intermediation and client service in Asia under the umbrella of our FXPB and Client Agency Prime Execution [Cape] service, with an absolute focus on fulfilling our clients’ needs,” says NatWest Markets’ Singapore-based head of prime services in Asia‑Pacific, William Egan. 

“To achieve this, we moved our FXPB client service team out of operations and into the front office and, at around the same time, NatWest Markets launched a segregated order desk in London, which is a fully fledged standalone trading operation that can handle client orders,” he adds. 

This individual client-centric approach, handled through a standalone but fully fledged 24/5 trading operation, is even more important with the advent of uncleared margin rules (UMR) worldwide that will bring more market players onto the radars of their relevant monetary authorities in Asia this year and next.

Given the reduction of capital thresholds for the application of the new margin clearing rules, many smaller trading operations – and those for which FX is only a relatively small part of their core activities – will find that a full-scale FXPB relationship is not a cost-effective way to manage their FX trading exposures. NatWest Markets FXPB is at the vanguard of offering a solution for these players via its Cape offering.

“Many companies cannot justify getting a fully fledged FXPB relationship because it’s either too costly, too much hassle or a combination of both, and then they can find themselves with a disjointed solution in place for accessing liquidity. For these clients our Cape product is the ideal solution,” says Egan.

“Clients who sign on to our Cape product get many of the benefits of an FXPB relationship without the associated costs, documentation and technology requirements, where they can access bank and non-bank liquidity pools via an institutional-grade execution desk,” he adds. “Accessing the FX market in this way, clients are able to simplify and net their UMR requirements as they face off against one bank, NatWest Markets, and that makes for a much more time-, cost- and collateral-effective solution.” 

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