CLS Group just reported its annual volumes and shared that in 2018 it experienced a 2.5% increase in new business in its FX settlement service CLSSettlement. The average daily settlement volume was USD130 billion.
CLS has already released record traded volumes in CLSSettlement in its H1 2018 interim report.
More than 90% of this growth came from the buy-side, and the average daily gross volume settled by the buy-side was up by 18% from 2017. The new business growth, together with additional volume as a result of increased volatility in the FX market as a whole, was up to a 12% increase overall in average daily gross volume in 2018 compared to 2017.
The FX Global Code, as well as other industry initiatives, have raised awareness of the need to adopt a best practice approach to settlement and post-trade processing among the buy-side, therefore driving adoption of CLSSettlement.
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Joe Ziccarelli
Commenting on the growth figures, Joe Ziccarelli, Head of Sales at CLS, said:
A key part of CLS’s growth strategy has been to be more actively engaged with the buy-side to help drive wider participation in CLSSettlement. Our latest growth figures prove this strategy is working. We hope to further build our buy-side community with the recent launches of solutions to improve post-trade processing, such as CLSNet and CLSTradeMonitor. These solutions allow buy-side participants to access CLS directly in order to benefit from operational process efficiencies and risk mitigation.