China Foreign Exchange Trade System, a subsidiary of the People's Bank of China, today launched its multi-bank portal built with foreign exchange technology from Reuters (LSE: RTR), the global information company.
This major project, completed on schedule, supports Reuters position as the leading provider of foreign exchange systems and technology.
China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) is the only organisation licensed to trade foreign exchange in China. CFETS member banks will benefit from a real-time, internet-based foreign exchange multi-bank portal, thereby facilitating the growth of FX trading in China. The financial institutions which have the permission to trade foreign currencies will be able to trade streaming executable FX prices contributed by 10 price making institutions. The FX prices are provided by leading global institutions namely ABN AMRO, Bank of China, Bank of Montreal, Citic, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ICBC, ING and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
This CFETS portal will enable China's foreign exchange market to begin trading of eight foreign currency pairs - the U.S. dollar against the Euro, Yen, Hong Kong dollar, Sterling, Swiss franc, Australian dollar and Canadian dollar, plus the Euro versus the Yen.
CFETS' portal is based on a customised version of Reuters Electronic Trading (RET) platform and is deployed in its data centre in Shanghai. With Reuters Electronic Trading, CFETS can now offer its member banks access to executable prices from leading global liquidity providers and thereby allow domestic financial institutions, that may otherwise not had the credit, to trade in the international currency markets.
The 10 liquidity providers contribute competitive executable prices on a "best bid" and "best offer" basis. CFETS also offers a full trading, settlement and clearing facilities to all its members and market makers. Domestic banks in China can leave orders, request a price or execute FX transactions with a single click for any of the non-RMB currency pairs quoted on the portal.