The Neo platform has evolved into a central pillar of UBS’s global FX franchise, delivering liquidity, insight and execution tools in a unified environment that reflects the changing expectations of institutional clients.
The platform, which also won the category in 2024, is designed to be more than a venue for price discovery. It acts as an integrated workspace where users can move seamlessly from pre-trade analysis to execution and post-trade management, across products ranging from spot and swaps to options and precious metals. Its modular design allows clients to access the tools most relevant to their workflows, while its cross-asset breadth ensures that UBS remains competitive in a market where efficiency and usability are as important as pricing.
Neo has expanded significantly over recent years, both in terms of liquidity provision and product coverage. UBS has invested in broadening its reach in major currency pairs while also developing capacity in more specialised markets. This includes deeper support for Middle Eastern currencies such as the dirham and riyal, reflecting the growing importance of that region to UBS’s global markets and wealth-management businesses.
Technology has been a critical factor in this progress. UBS has consistently invested in the underlying infrastructure of Neo to improve speed, stability and scalability. Rewrites of trade ingestion logic, enhancements to order acceptance and new credit-check mechanisms have been aimed at reducing latency and providing clients with confidence in execution even during volatile periods. The migration of order routing into UBS’s strategic order book architecture is another step towards full automation, ensuring that pricing and liquidity remain robust when market conditions become more challenging.
Clients first
At the same time, Neo has been shaped by a clear commitment to client control. The introduction of expanded self-service tools has allowed users to manage more of the trade lifecycle directly, reducing the reliance on sales desks for allocations, forward rolls and post-trade amendments. Uptake has been strong, reflecting an appetite for autonomy among institutional clients who want greater flexibility in how they interact with their dealer platforms.
As Ozgun Unal, head of e-FX distribution sales EMEA, notes: “UBS Neo isn’t just built for our clients – it’s built with them. Every feature, new enhancement and innovation reflects their feedback and their evolving execution needs.”
UBS Neo isn’t just built for our clients – it’s built with them
Ozgun Unal
Analytics have also become a defining feature. UBS’s STIR Analytics tool, initially built for internal traders, has been extended to clients and now provides detailed insights into market structure, central-bank expectations and scenario analysis. The platform has also developed FX Spot Analytics, designed to give users real-time transparency on volumes and spreads while enabling comparisons with historical patterns. These tools speak to the growing demand from clients not just for liquidity but for context and decision support embedded in the same environment in which they execute trades.
The options franchise has been another area of growth, with Neo supporting expanded product coverage and lifecycle management capabilities. New functionality such as cash-settled options in platinum and palladium has been added in line with client demand, while algorithmic volatility curves and advanced pricing models have improved the efficiency of trading less liquid or more complex structures.
Intelligence driven
Neo’s scope extends beyond trading into research, commentary and connectivity. The platform integrates UBS’s own insights and trading-floor perspectives, offering clients a continuous stream of intelligence alongside execution capabilities. This blend of content and trading has proved increasingly important as market participants look for ways to connect research directly with actionable strategies in real time.
The recognition of UBS Neo as the world’s best single-dealer platform reflects a combination of breadth, depth and usability. Liquidity provision across major and niche pairs has been matched by an emphasis on infrastructure resilience. Tools and analytics have been expanded in direct response to client needs, while new products and workflows have been integrated to reflect the growing complexity of FX trading.
