The Royal Bank of Scotland and electronic currency broker EBS have launched a new foreign exchange benchmark, EBS RBS FiX, designed to offer corporate treasuries a more profound insight into interbank dealing rates and a set price for bundling subsidiary deal flows.
The EBS RBS FiX generates benchmarks for 61 currencies, 'fixed' at set points throughout each major trading time zone and published shortly thereafter. The snapshot takes into account rates leading up to the fixing and includes a measure of market depth as a component of the calculations. The rates will be published to Bloomberg, Moneyline Telerate, Reuters and other information providers.
Additionally, Royal Bank of Scotland has developed an online trading product allowing clients to deal at the EBS RBS FiX prices at pre-agreed spreads. Clients can upload transactions to be dealt at any fixing in the future and can download completed deals directly into their systems or spreadsheets. An Automated Programming Interface (API) is also available for automated trading, booking and straight through processing of high volumes of trades.
Martin Spurr, head of eVentures, RBS, comments: "Increasingly, multi-national treasuries are centralising dealing operations to reduce cost. In these circumstances, the dealing system developed by RBS can by used to aggregate, net and control subsidiary flows; an ideal solution where deal amounts are too small to justify individual manual dealing."
Benchmarks are increasingly popular for corporate treasuries, investors and trading intermediaries as they provide an independent rate that can be substantiated internally to subsidiaries or externally to clients without needing to check the price against other systems or banks.
Jack Jeffery, chief executive officer, EBS, says: "We believe that there will be significant demand beyond the traditional inter-bank market for timely and accurate market snapshots."