British multinational investment bank, Barclays Plc announced this Wednesday that it will start a foreign exchange (forex) pricing engine in Singapore, which is expected to be launched in the middle of 2021.

With the launch of the trading and pricing engine in Singapore, Barclays now has four electronic trading hubs across the world. The British lender joins a number of top financial institutions to launch FX engines in the city-state.

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According to a statement published today, Barclays will build a local version of its trading system BARX. With the launch in Singapore, Barclays will have trading hubs in New York, London, Tokyo and the island state.

Commenting on the announcement, James Hassett, co-head of global emerging markets and G10 Linear FX said in the statement: “The deployment demonstrates our increased commitment to our clients in Singapore and in the region. FX is an important growth area for the firm globally, and critically, this takes us from a three-hub model to a four-hub model.”

Barclays Joins Singapore Movement

Barclays joins a number of Tier-1 banks to launch FX pricing and trading engines in Singapore. As Finance Magnates reported, JPMorgan’s FX trading engine went live in the country earlier this year.

Other banks that have set up engines in the country, include Citigroup Inc., and UBS Group AG. The move comes as Singapore’s local regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), aims to make the island state the Asian hub for FX.

“Singapore is well-placed to serve the strong institutional FX flows in Asia, and we are heartened to see continued strong interest from top FX players to set up their regional pricing and matching engines in Singapore,” added Gillian Tan, executive director, financial markets development, at MAS in the statement.

The benefits of trading engines allow investors to reduce the time lag from routing trades elsewhere. With faster pricing, Singapore is able to take market share from Asia’s key players: Japan and Hong Kong.