Buy-side Perspectives Issue 16 | Page 32

FOREIGN EXCHANGE How do you see your dedicated FX trading function contributing to the overall investment process and client satisfaction for Insight Investment? We deliver a market leading execution service that minimises market impact, by only interacting with liquidity providers who behave in a way which does not leak information. How do you foresee the trading technology landscape, with a few incumbent brands, shifting in the coming years? What will be the focus areas? this and delivering improvements to the investment process to deliver added value. As we already know, much of the FX trading in the industry is uncleared OTC derivatives operating in an opaque market today. What developments do you anticipate or think is needed in the next years? As has been the case for a few years now, the focus area will remain the availability and quality of execution data. As an industry we need to A continuation of the developments in liquidity provider execution analysis. As an industry we need to improve our access to execution data and make changes to allow the data to be standardised Richard at the 9 th ATF FX London We believe that we access the market for our clients at a minimal cost. We use our execution expertise as a feedback to the pre-trade decision to compliment the overall investment process. What is the rationale for FX traders to trade with FX trading algorithms, are they robust and do they consistently deliver better results? FX trading algorithms deliver quick, transparent and auditable execution in the market place. We believe that we satisfy our Best Execution regulatory requirements by utilising algorithms. Algorithms allow quick access to the market with transparent fill data. Voice trading can NOT deliver the same degree of auditable transparency. We have an algorithmic trading policy which delivers evidential results, which allow us to prove that our method of execution is robust. The policy allows us to challenge our executions to ensure that the results we are delivering are consistently good. 32 improve our access to execution data and make changes to allow the data to be standardised. We need to be able expand the data collection universe and will lean on vendors/brands who are capable of delivering analytics on this data. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to satisfy these analytics is currently unproven and I would expect that this will be an area of focus in helping to deliver useful trade analytics. As trading in general moves towards more automation, in which ways do you think this will affect a FX traders’ role? Automated trading via Execution Management Systems will become the norm and I think the FX trader’s role will be one akin to flying a plane on autopilot. The trader will be overseeing the whole investment execution process and will try to add value holistically. Automation will allow easier capture of exceptions and the trader will focus more of his time in managing www.buysideintel.com I would like to see the industry improve its transparency around rejection codes, type of liquidity, cross currency liquidity and last look. Insight is a supporter of the FX Global Code and I would like to see greater uptake from our peers on the buyside in signing it. I think this would enable the industry to move forward as a group and allow us to formalise our achievements and targets for a better FX market place. As electronic liquidity providers are gaining the buy side’s trust and momentum across the industry, how do you see the FX counterparty list evolving over the next years? I think that a reduced core of electronic liquidity providers will exist in the future specialising in particular currencies. The best liquidity providers will be white labelled for banks or other liquidity providers, enabling the utilisation of bank balance sheets for non-PB relationships. The PB model may grow to facilitate this move towards a core group of liquidity providers. Summer 2019