Spot is the most commoditised product in FX and the hardest to differentiate. Everyone quotes the same pairs and the variables that decide whether a client’s order fills at the price they saw are measured in microseconds and basis points. Improvements are therefore usually incremental. What distinguished UBS in 2025 was that its improvements were not: the bank made a step change in latency, cut rejects by more than a quarter, and systematically reduced the footprint its own hedging leaves in the market.
Less visible is what UBS did to its own market footprint. The bank analysed where its execution ecosystem was leaking information and made two changes: it segmented certain client flow into a dedicated warehousing framework, isolating it from skew-driven adjustments, and it sharply reduced how widely it distributes unskewed prices. That came at an initial cost in volume and footprint, but on skewed flow across G7 pairs it produced measurably better markouts. Alongside it, UBS now warehouses benign flow for longer and identifies information-rich flow earlier, which cuts unnecessary hedging.
The strength of our FX spot business comes from the combination of global scale and disciplined execution
Paul Buttenmueller
A third strand appears administrative and turned out not to be. UBS runs one of the most configurable pricing platforms in the market, and over the years that configurability had fragmented. In 2025, it reset execution attributes across more than 1,500 client APIs and electronic communication network streams, grouping similar flow types onto common settings. That enabled comparison of clients for the first time.
Investigating the outliers often identified problems on the client side, such as market data being consumed poorly during volatility, and turned the trading desk into something closer to an execution consultant. Clients can now see how their outcomes compare with those of similar firms.
Capacity expanded alongside quality. Streaming sizes in the major pairs rose from $300 million to $500 million, with increases across Scandies, Asian EM and CEEMEA currencies. In precious metals, now a core part of the spot franchise, UBS quotes in 100,000-ounce gold and one million ounces of silver, while also pricing from as little as 100 ounces. It integrated CME futures with OTC price discovery to hold pricing together through the metals rally.
Structurally, the most consequential move was merging the electronic and voice G10 spot desks, which now sit together for each region. The logic is that clients rarely think in those separate terms.
The test came in April 2025. UBS’s spot volumes ran more than 50% above normal, fill ratios stayed above 95%, and G10 market share rose 15% month on month.
UBS’s 2025 spot record therefore rests on four measurable changes delivered during the year: an order-of-magnitude reduction in tail latency, a dramatically reduced reject ratio, better markouts on skewed flow, and scaled-up streaming capacity in the major pairs.
“The strength of our FX spot business comes from the combination of global scale and disciplined execution,” says Paul Buttenmueller, global head of eFX trading. “By connecting our voice and electronic capabilities through a single, integrated framework, we’re able to deliver liquidity efficiently and consistently across markets, client segments and market conditions.”
