e-Forex Magazine | Retail Forex Client | Retail Forex Client - Trading through banks - considering the value proposition for retail FX investors
Retail Forex Client : Retail Forex Client - Trading through banks - considering the value proposition for retail FX investors
First Published in e-Forex Magazine July 2008
Frances Maguire
An increasing number of banks are now offering private investors the ability to trade FX on a speculative basis, on margin, previously only offered by retail brokers and portals that aggregated prices for private investors from the various brokers. Frances Maguire investigates what products are currently available.
The expansion of banks' offerings has come both from banks that already offer stock dealing and from those that are large FX liquidity providers looking to expand their customer base. What is clear, is that there are still more banks looking to enter this lucrative market, where they can compete easily with the offerings already available based purely upon their standing as a regulated bank.
Research conducted by Barclays Stockbrokers, which began offering spot FX to private investors last month, shows that more than a quarter of investors
(26%) surveyed are looking to trade FX in the future with 16% already trading this asset class. In the past three years, according to BIS, the retail FX market has seen unprecedented growth with a 70% increase in monthly trading volumes, with the UK now representing a third of the world's total retail FX flow.
CitiFXPro
One of the most recent bank entrants to the retail FX market is Citi. CitiFXPro was launched March 2008, through a partnership with Saxo Bank, as technology and service provider. Sanjay Madgavkar, global head of retail FX trading at Citi, says: "The retail FX has grown substantially over the last few years - we now believe it represents about 10-15% of the total buy-side to bank trading volume. We believe there is a considerable demand for the reliability and a global presence that banks bring to the retail market."
