Best market data newcomer (vendor or product)—SGX FX

Product overview—Real-Time Composite

SGX FX Real-Time Composite provides accurate bid, mid and offer prices across 74 currency pairs for spot, forward and non-deliverable forward (NDF) products, including all standard tenors, International Monetary Market, BMFs (BM&FBOVESPA) and turn dates. The instrument universe contains natives and crosses, as well as multiple quantities at each tenor. It is used for price construction, signal generation, benchmarking of trading strategies and risk management.

The solution

Each composite print is constructed using executable pricing streams to provide end-users with reliable and representative rates. This is a key differentiator in comparison with other foreign exchange (FX) data providers, which tend to work off indicative pricing, allowing users to benefit from real-time market intelligence, achieve better trading rates and refine their view of the over-the-counter (OTC) FX landscape.

Secret sauce

The real-time composite is curated from tradable prices originating from a variety of international and regional liquidity providers – banks and non-banks. They are split across four regions where liquidity is colocated for SGX FX’s buy-side community. The feed provides data points for Group of 10 currencies, emerging markets, NDFs and precious metal pairs. Each price is published with confidence levels providing insight on price construction and data quality, which represents a whole segment of real-time composite engineering.

Recent milestones

• SGX FX created a data department four years ago. Over the course of 2024, the firm decided to invest further by creating a new business line and hiring a team to lead its commercial development
• The real-time version of the composite with 50-millisecond resolution was released into production at the end of 2024, opening up a new market segment for SGX FX
• Turn dates were added as special dates on the forward curve.

Future objectives

• Expand the product suite to include FX swaps, FX options and crypto
• Support the applications of the International Organization of Securities Commissions and the UK Financial Conduct Authority to make the real-time composite a regulated benchmark within the industry
• Enrich the current feed with additional dates (central bank meetings, special dates, figures announcements, broken dates, and so on) and extended coverage of crosses and pairs along with swaps prices
• Grow and diversify the client base by the end of the 2025.

Why SGX FX won

SGX FX made a little bit of history in this year’s IMD & IRD Awards by emerging top in the Best market data newcomer (vendor or product) category—its first-ever win in WatersTechnolgy’s awards campaigns. A subsidiary of Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX Group), SGX FX is by no means a newcomer as an entity, although its regular enhancements and iterations to its various services are qualification enough for this perennially close‑fought category. SGX FX’s pricing service—featuring 74 currency pairs for spot, forward and NDFs—is derived from real-time pricing streams based on executed trades, and not indicative or theoretical prices, which makes it that much more realistic and, therefore, valuable to market participants. Users are increasingly looking to be consulted by their providers when it comes to product road maps and future offerings, something alluded to in the customer quote submitted with the firm’s entry. Its client focus will no doubt serve it well going forward and will go some way to helping SGX FX double up on this year’s success when next year’s awards roll around.