Best FX prime broker for Asia: NatWest

NatWest Markets’ prime brokerage (PB) has made significant headway in Asia-Pacific (Apac), where its versatile solutions cater to a diverse and dynamic set of market participants

NatWest’s PB business in the Apac region grew at its fastest pace and achieved its largest single-day trading volumes in 2024. In part, this was because of the heightened volatility in the Japanese market, but also the increasing number of market participants taking advantage of the accommodating PB solutions developed by the bank for market participants in the region.

Jade Foo, Apac head of prime services at NatWest said: “Over the past few years, we have spent time developing specific operational processing flows to accommodate high-frequency clients. It was satisfying to see this work pay dividends during recent periods of market volatility. We were able to process near-record volumes over many consecutive days without any system delays impacting our clients.”

Long recognised for its bespoke PB solutions, NatWest has an approach to developing solutions designed to fit market participants’ specific needs that has been particularly well received in Asia. This is especially true, given the bank’s client base in the region is the most diverse in the world, ranging from large retail brokers in Japan to prime-of-primes in Australia and all those in between, and their PB needs differ widely.

“Our approach to creating client-focused solutions is what differentiates us from our competitors,” points out Marcus Butt, global head of prime services at NatWest. “We take the time to fully understand our clients’ needs and deliver them new ideas rather than offering prepackaged solutions. At present, we manage at least half a dozen different modular PB models with widely different configurations, and this is particularly appreciated in Apac.”

NatWest’s approach to PB is straightforward: it operates first and foremost an agency execution model. And, while some elements of its various PB solutions may overlap, the inner mechanisms diverge substantially. In Apac, these give consideration to the region’s many small and medium-sized firms, with their particular operational restrictions inherent to their size and national market. Despite their diversity, Butt says that NatWest’s clients in Asia are keen to experiment in their search for integrated and sophisticated PB solutions.

In one such solution, tools allow the siloed businesses of a conglomerate to route liquidity and hedging within the group without needing new credit lines, a formula that suits large Japanese retail brokers – an important client base for NatWest in Asia.

Another service designed for the region is a cross-margining solution that allows clients to net their overall position between their over-the-counter (OTC) FX positions traded via NatWest with FX futures at a dedicated futures commission merchant (FCM).

“Many of our principal trading firm clients based in Singapore actively trade futures versus cash FX strategies,” points out Butt. “These clients often have established relationships with their preferred FCM, and many of the FCMs do not offer FX PB services. We looked into how we could deliver margin efficiency to clients so they wouldn’t have to post margin on both their cash and futures positions. The result was a tri-party framework with external FCMs, where these would share the positions and margins collected on futures trading, with NatWest overlaying that with what we have on the OTC side and margining accordingly based on the net position.

“Through the agreement with the FCM, we acted as a pseudo‑single legal entity across groups, which involved a significant amount of legal work, but is a testament to what we can achieve to meet our clients’ needs.”

The futures-versus-cash FX concept functioned so well that, following client demand, NatWest replicated the solution to cover positions between different PBs.

“Maintaining relationships with multiple PBs is good practice for clients that want to manage their risks,” explains Butt. “However, the use of multiple PBs can be costly because clients must constantly switch positions to manage their margin requirements across them. To address this, we developed a model similar to the futures-versus-cash solution that works between two FX PBs, which leads to significant margin and operational efficiency.”

The discussions between NatWest, its clients and the ensuing PB solutions demonstrate the bank’s inclination to think creatively to address and solve its clients’ challenges.

NatWest was named Best FX prime broker for Asia at the FX Markets Asia Awards 2025.

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