Overview
Singapore is the third largest FX centre globally after London and New York, and is the largest in Asia Pacific. Everyday, over half a trillion US dollars of FX is traded in Singapore. The FX sector is pivotal to Singapore's standing as a major trading and corporate treasury hub in the region, and underpins the vibrancy of Singapore's international financial centre.
With all of the top five global banks housing their regional FX sales and trading teams here, Singapore offers a deep and liquid market for the trading and hedging of G10 currencies, as well as Asian emerging market currencies.
As a major FX centre globally, MAS is keen to develop Singapore's FX market to serve the growing trading and hedging needs in the region. To this end, MAS is working with market participants such as banks and trading platforms to build up Singapore's e-trading infrastructure. This will improve price discovery and FX trade execution in the region, and market participants will benefit from better latency, pricing and liquidity in FX and OTC derivatives trading.
Besides Singapore's strength in OTC derivatives globally, our exchanges also offer a comprehensive suite of exchange-traded FX futures and options contracts to complement the OTC market in offering more hedging products and solutions to market participants.
Key Facts
(BIS Triennial Survey of FX and OTC Derivatives Trading, 2019)
Regulations and Guidance
MAS has expanded the scope of the Securities and Futures Act to include OTC derivatives in 2018. Dealing in capital markets products, including securities, units in a collective investment scheme, exchange-traded derivatives contracts, OTC derivatives contracts and spot foreign exchange contracts for the purposes of leveraged foreign exchange trading, is a regulated activity under the Securities and Futures Act, and financial institutions conducting this activity in Singapore will need to apply for the Capital Markets Services (“CMS”) license. Interested parties can access the following link to the CMS license guidelines and application form.
MAS regulates market operators or venues under two categories – Approved Exchanges (“AE”) and Recognised Market Operators (“RMO”). Systematically-important market operators are regulated as AEs and are subject to a higher level of statutory obligations, while other market operators are regulated as RMOs. Interested parties can refer to the below links for the application forms to operate in Singapore’s market.
Market Statistics
FX and OTC derivatives trading volume:
- BIS Triennial Survey of FX and OTC Derivatives Trading
- Singapore Foreign Exchange Market Committee (SFEMC) Semi-Annual Survey of Singapore FX Volume
Exchange-traded derivatives trading volume:
Initiatives
Focus Areas
We are positioning Singapore as the global FX price discovery and liquidity centre in the Asian time zone, and growing the e-trading ecosystem here to enhance support for our investor base and growth of Asian FX markets. This is a strategic development outlined in MAS’ Financial Services Industry Transformation Map (“ITM”), rolled out in Oct 2017.
MAS supports first movers in primary inter-dealer platforms, multi-dealer platforms and liquidity providers to set up matching and pricing/ trading engines in Singapore.
Jobs and Training
MAS works closely with tripartite partners to build a pipeline of finance professionals and leaders.
What's New
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"Growing a Vibrant Insurance Linked Securities Market in Asia" - Speech by Mr Lim Cheng Khai, Executive Director, Financial Markets Development Department, Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Artemis ILS Asia Conference 13 July 2023
Steve Evans, Editor in Chief, Artemis Distinguished guests Ladies and gentlemen Introduction 1. Good morning. Thank you for having me at the Artemis ILS Asia Conference. It is good to see the event back for its fifth installation in Singapore. I am happy to be here, to reconnect with friends I’ve met in Artemis New York...
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MAS and ABS lead consortium to harness blockchain technology for more efficient inter-bank payments
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) announced today that the consortium which they are leading has successfully developed software prototypes of three different models for decentralised inter-bank payment and settlements with liquidity savings mechanisms.