Competition was close this year for this award. While the level of functionality on the three main systems, Currenex, FXall and FX Connect, grows ever similar, the business models of these portals make it difficult to compare like with like.
Multibank portals work best for clients that have fiduciary responsibilities to get the best price they can. In all other cases, despite what they say publicly about allowing clients to choose for themselves, banks prefer those clients to make use of their proprietary systems. The investment they continue to make in these platforms for the sake of the client loyalty they hope to secure is proof of this.
FXall wins the award again this year because it is the multibank platform that best fulfils the purpose of competitive quoting by providing auto-pricing from the largest number of banks. One user of Currenex backs up the value in this by explaining that few of his relationship banks auto quote on Currenex at present; often, one auto-priced quote appears on screen seconds before others from banks quoting manually.
For its part, Currenex says 12 of its banks are auto quoting, which shows a quick uptake since its introduction of auto pricing only this summer.