UBI is the newest bank to commit to the service and plans to go live in the fourth quarter of this year. UBI joins several major international banks that are already participating as market makers on Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange.

This move by UBI will add further weight in the dealer to customer foreign exchange service by focusing on the Indian Rupee and Bullion prices for the domestic Indian market.

Shri MV Nair, Chairman and Managing Director, Union Bank of India said: "Participating on the Reuters FX and bullion trading platform in conjunction with the deployment of the Reuters electronic trading pricing engine allows UBI to access existing and new clients via the Reuters desktop. We are pleased to leverage the Reuters sales and distribution channel to market INR and bullion prices."

Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange and Bullion build on the Reuters established foreign exchange position, helping banks to reduce costs and expand the reach of their prices. RTFX currently has the support of 22 price makers and over 500 price takers actively trading on the system around the world.

Samir Shah, Reuters South Asia, Managing Director said, "Union Bank of India's vision is to become the bank of first choice through constant innovation and investment. By signing up to be a market maker on what is the world's largest Foreign Exchange Reuters distribution network, the Bank strives to play a vital role in the FX market as the Rupee is poised to become convertible over the next few years."

Alex Hungate, Reuters Asia Managing Director commented, "In Asia we see liquidity growth in transactions across asset classes and UBI's involvement will increase momentum in INR and bullion liquidity. Reuters strategy is to enable our customers to gain advantage from our unique, global distribution foot-print, and best-in-class transactions capabilities."

Reuters is actively working to grow the liquidity and number of transactions on Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange and Bullion to ensure that we add value to all users of the service.

Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange and Bullion bring financial market professionals the ability to quickly and securely execute spot and forward FX and bullion while managing post trade processing through a single sign-on, utilising Reuters unrivalled global desktop in the FX marketplace. This capability is supported by the comprehensive, real time news and powerful analytics from Reuters 3000 Xtra and Reuters Dealing 3000 terminals, at no additional cost, allowing price takers to effectively manage their trading positions.

UBI also announced that it will implement Reuters leading edge pricing engine technology, Reuters Electronic Trading for Automated Dealing (RET-AD), to automate its branch FX transactions in a real-time environment over the bank's intranet.

The same pricing engine will be used to make prices on Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange and Reuters Trading for Bullion. By implementing a single price engine within its treasury operations, the bank will effectively consolidate its price making capability to a single platform for both its branches and corporates. While UBI branches will trade on real-time foreign exchange prices by accessing the Bank's website from any standard internet browser on their bank's internal systems, its corporate clients will access executable prices over the Reuters desktop.

Reuters has the largest foreign exchange community with roughly 112,000 foreign exchange professionals across 125 countries relying on the company's news and information. Reuters Dealing 3000 platform is used by nearly 18,000 FX and money market professionals across 4,000 organizations to trade FX spot, forwards, options and futures, plus interest rate and overnight index swaps.