In a bid to accelerate the foreign exchange market in the Philippines, the Bankers Association of the Philippines (BAP) joined hands with Bloomberg to launch a number of new initiatives.
Bloomberg will be responsible for calculating the spot reference rate of USD/PHP, an important benchmark used by both onshore and offshore banks along with corporations and asset managers for trade Execution , valuation, and benchmarking of portfolios.
The calculation will be done based on all trades carried out by BAP member banks. The results will be published on both the BAP website and the Bloomberg Terminal, a go-to platform for traders across the world.
Mentioning the partnership with Bloomberg, BAP’s Managing Director Benjamin P. Castillo commented: “we are pleased to partner with Bloomberg to provide enhanced solutions to the FX community in the Philippines.”
“These new initiatives will support the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) financial market development reforms to better organize and deepen the country’s FX market. We look forward to execution efficiency, increased market Liquidity and transparency leveraging Bloomberg’s technology platform and industry best practices,” he added.
As agreed upon in the partnership deal, BAP member banks have to conduct USD/PHP spot trading on Bloomberg’s FX electronic trading and communication platform FXGO. The platform allows regulators to have real-time visibility of market activity and thus greater oversight on the FX market.
With this deal, the liquidity of the FX spot and futures market in the Philippines have been pooled on to a single platform - FXGO - as futures are already being traded and reported on Bloomberg’s electronic platform since 2015.
Old allies
Both parties also have a long history of working together. In November last year, in association with the BAP, the Money Market Association of the Philippines (MART) and the Philippine Depository & Trust Corp (PDTC), Bloomberg unveiled an electronic trading system for repurchase agreements (repos) in the Philippines.
“Bloomberg is excited to extend our ongoing partnership with the Bankers Association of the Philippines by improving transparency and efficiency in the Philippines FX market,” said Andrea Mosconi, Bloomberg’s Head of Sales, ASEAN. “As the Philippines undergoes economic transformation, we will continue to bring best-in-class technology to advance one of the world’s fastest-growing countries.”
