Clients will be able to trade streaming prices on volumes up to $3 million during normal FX trading hours from 8am Monday, Sydney time, to 5pm Friday, New York time. They can order larger trades on a request-for-quote basis.
Clients trading the currency pair will have a margin requirement of 8% and the minimum trade size has been set at $5,000 notional. Access will be available to all the bank’s institutional and retail clients.
Denmark-based Saxo Bank’s major strength is in the retail FX market, where it was one of the first firms to offer online retail FX trading, and is currently recognized as a market leader, according to a report published by Celent last week. Banks such as Citi and Barclays have set up white-label relationships enabling their retail customers to trade through Saxo’s platform and the new USDCNH offering will be available to these clients too. The bank is also expanding its wealth management offerings.
According to Hugh Taggart, Saxo’s head of content & strategy, the mix between retail and institutional volumes is equally split, with the institutional business largely driven by its white-label clients. Saxo has no current plans to move further into the institutional markets directly, says Taggart.
Celent’s report also said Asia was now the biggest retail FX market in the world, accounting for 40% of the $200 billion market, and was likely to expand further when China further liberalized its currency market. In this year’s Euromoney FX survey of the wholesale FX market, Saxo Bank ranked 28th, with an overall market share of 0.34%.