Citi announced a new set of requirements for its FX vendor platforms. Citi’s foreign exchange business is requiring foreign exchange platform vendors it connects through to commit to the principles of best practice in the FX Global Code. As the first major bank to sign the FX Global Code, Citi is committed to its global principles of good practice in the foreign exchange market, and its aim to provide a common set of guidelines to promote the integrity and effective functioning of the wholesale foreign exchange market.

Citi has produced a scorecard that assesses each FX vendor platform against a number of criteria with the intention of providing market participants with greater transparency and clients with an objective framework for vendor platform comparisons. The scorecards are objective and are based on a collaborative approach. All measures outside customer service are quantitative; each vendor invited to review scorecard template and provide feedback ahead of formal review and each vendor was invited to submit corrections following the review. The initial review of 53 vendors has resulted in 12 vendors being off boarded by Citi and their connections are being terminated to simplify connectivity and reduce maintenance costs.

Alaa Saeed, global head of Citi’s FX electronic platforms and distribution, commented: “Citi’s scorecard considers a number of key principles within the FX Global Code. We found notable findings in relation to a number of key principles, including but not limited to, interaction with our liquidity, order management; market impact; liquidity aggregation, order routing logic; platform stability; testing of new products and coordinated releases.”

Other requirements platform vendors are assessed on include:

– Availability of SEF & MTF venues

– Vendor functional offering

– Brokerage rate card

– Citi ranking / participation on platform

– Scores for each of

Customer service
API connectivity: type, configurability, resilience and colocation
Execution capability
– Transparency around interaction with Citi liquidity

– Platform stability as measured against our Citi internal benchmarks

– Investment towards Client and Citi outstanding platform enhancements

“We hope this approach will increase standards and competition across all vendors”, said Brian McCappin – global head of Citi FX institutional sales.

Source: Citi