Best Asia FX spot house: UBS

Deep liquidity, resilient technology and an expanding metals franchise have helped UBS strengthen its position in Asian spot markets, including during some of the most testing trading conditions of the past year

Asia has shouldered more of the load in global FX markets in recent months, as geopolitical developments, tariff announcements and weekend news flow have generated bouts of sharp volatility during traditionally less liquid trading hours.

For UBS, that environment has underlined the importance of being able to provide clients with both depth and consistency when markets become difficult.

“When markets move during illiquid hours, the ability to price risk from first principles and then put scale behind the product is what differentiates globally integrated institutions that have the depth and scale to manage complex risk,” says Joby John, head of FX trading, Apac at UBS.

That scale is reflected in UBS’s growing share of Asian deliverable FX markets. According to one industry benchmark, the bank exceeded 10% market share in JPY, HKD, SGD and THB in 2025.

The gains reflect a combination of the bank’s reach, regional expertise and continued investment in its electronic trading capabilities, says Paul Buttenmueller, global head of eFX trading at UBS.

“It’s hard to single out one action – our global client base, local coverage and tech investment all contributed to us gaining ground,” he says.

Client demand has also prompted the bank to increase the size available through its direct application programming interface (API) channels. Maximum spot streaming liquidity has risen to $300 million in USD/CNY and USD/HKD.

Those capabilities have been particularly important during periods of market stress. Following the US tariff announcements in April 2025, average daily volumes at UBS increased by nearly 40% year on year despite challenging liquidity conditions, while the bank recorded market share gains across Asian currencies.

For clients, dependability in such conditions is a key attribute.

“Clients care about reliability – not only tight top-of-book spreads but also access to deep tradable liquidity. The depth of the order book matters when prices move,” says John. “In periods of stress, clients don’t have the luxury of shopping around – they need to get it right the first time.”

It’s hard to single out one action – our global client base, local coverage and tech investment all contributed to us gaining ground

Paul Buttenmueller, UBS

Underpinning that resilience has been investment in the bank’s technology infrastructure. A major worldwide network upgrade increased bandwidth across key FX hubs, including Singapore and Tokyo, improving price discovery and pricing consistency. The upgraded infrastructure has enabled UBS to process 90% more data during microbursts, while retaining capacity for further growth.

The bank has also strengthened its pre-trade infrastructure through its eCredit 2.0 engine. The technology enables significantly larger notional credit approvals while delivering round-trip latency improvements of up to 50–100 times, depending on the location of API connectivity. The result, the bank says, has been fewer rejects and greater capacity to handle client flow.

Another important area of expansion has been precious metals. UBS has moved into futures market-making for precious metals on CME, broadening the liquidity available to manage and hedge risk. Its market share in spot metals has consistently exceeded 20% throughout the past 12 months, with Chinese banks and Asian precious metals trading houses increasingly routing sizeable spot flows electronically to the bank.

“CME futures are a huge pool of liquidity for metals. Broadening that liquidity helps us stream and manage risk for clients during volatile markets,” says Buttenmueller.

Alongside this, UBS has replaced manually maintained exchange-for-physical (EFP) pricing with fully algorithmic price generation across gold, silver, palladium and platinum. The development opens the way for the bank to distribute EFP pricing electronically through its flagship trading platform NEO and potentially contribute to the development of a broader electronic marketplace.

Client-facing technology has evolved too. FX Spot Analytics on NEO combines intraday market data, client behaviour insights and liquidity metrics, supported by a large language model-enabled chat function. It is designed to give sales teams more tailored insights into clients’ trading behaviour and execution requirements.

Post-trade workflows on NEO have meanwhile been redesigned to allow clients to manage allocations, spot-to-forward rolls, averaging and trade amendments themselves, reducing manual intervention and creating a more scalable process.

The value of these investments is most evident when markets are under pressure. With information increasingly arriving outside conventional trading windows, UBS has focused heavily on identifying potential stress points and ensuring its systems can continue operating when volatility spikes.

Clients care about reliability – not only tight top-of-book spreads but also access to deep tradeable liquidity. The depth of the order book matters when prices move

Joby John, UBS

“Volatility in Asia has changed. Major developments often emerge over the weekend or during the late hours of New York or early hours of Asia. That means we need to be ready for the unexpected and make sure our systems hold up when markets are under pressure,” says John. And performance at those moments can have a lasting impact on client relationships: “Clients remember failures; you build trust by delivering in the hard times,” he explains.

“We’re very happy to receive this award and recognition,” says Buttenmueller. “It shows the time and resources we’ve invested in making NEO a place clients can rely on in stressed markets.”

“We don’t build these capabilities to win awards,” adds John. “But it’s good to have confirmation that we’re on the right track for our clients.”

UBS was named Best Asia FX spot house at the FX Markets Asia Awards 2026.

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