Overall FX house of the year: UBS

UBS combined a single-dealer platform, targeted latency fixes and cross-asset market-making to give clients the confidence to execute large electronic risk transfers during Asia session stress

When US policy and geopolitical headlines landed in late US hours and spilled into Asian mornings, trading patterns shifted and liquidity fragmented.

Amid the fallout from episodes such as US president Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs and the late-2025 precious metals shocks, UBS was well placed to support clients, reshaping how they access liquidity. The firm enhanced its flagship NEO platform, refining commercial settings and broadening product breadth so clients could transact materially and reliably from Asia without stitching workflows together.

“FX has always been a focus product for UBS. The trust we have built is long term, as is our commitment to the business,” says Eric Li, global head of FX trading and head of global markets, Southeast Asia at UBS.

The bank’s strategy has seen steady technology investment, disciplined risk management and closer client workflows so the bank can be counted on when markets are most stressed. For end-users, that means a single place to price, execute and manage trades: pre‑trade analytics, streamed and algorithmic execution, and post-trade actions such as allocations, rolls and unwinds are all accessible without leaving the platform.

Filip Siekierczak, head of FX institutional sales, global markets at UBS, describes that unified approach as the NEO platform’s central design point. “NEO is not just an execution platform, it’s the entire trade lifecycle – from idea generation to optimisation, execution to trade monitoring and reporting,” he says.

By reducing manual handoffs, the platform removes a common source of error and delay and makes routine workflows more repeatable for asset managers, sovereign funds, corporates and private bank users.

Behind the user experience were targeted technical changes. UBS roughly halved FX spot round-trip times for client orders and boosted bandwidth in major trading hubs so the system could absorb surges. And the credit checking layer was re-engineered. A faster pre-trade credit engine and a reordering of last-look validations meant fewer legitimate trades were rejected for procedural reasons. These steps become crucial when liquidity driven by application programming interfaces, algorithms and streaming quotes collide in stressed minutes. “It’s a very, very small improvement, but it makes a very, very big difference,” Siekierczak says, noting how millisecond gains compound under pressure.

With those plumbing improvements in place, UBS changed how it showed liquidity. Streaming limits for core regional pairs such as USD/CNH and AUD/USD were increased so institutional customers could complete larger transfers in single clips rather than slicing orders into many smaller trades. Some clients who had relied on time-weighted algos began to prefer one-off transfers when the platform could demonstrate consistent fills at size. Streamed hit rates improved, especially in volatile markets, and the share of large electronic flow rose as a result, Siekierczak says.

The bank’s ability to match flow internally is central to the model. UBS serves more than 3,000 institutional and corporate clients worldwide, and enjoys extensive connectivity to wealth management clients. That client breadth, combined with the enhanced scale and execution capabilities brought by the integration of Credit Suisse, supplies a diverse pool of counterparties the bank can use to recycle risk.

In Asia, where venue liquidity can be patchy across time zones, finding the other side of the trade inside the franchise reduces the need to take large directional positions or to execute rapid external hedges at poor prices. “We have to create liquidity when it isn’t there,” Siekierczak explains.

Bringing more complex products onto the same stack reinforced the platform’s appeal. Swap streaming and a swaps aggregator pulled disparate liquidity into a single electronic access point; Float Plus and other algos were tuned to limit market impact for larger tickets.

The options engine now covers hundreds of payoff structures and includes a ‘smart entry’ function that converts free text inputs into tradable structures, reducing entry errors and speeding price discovery.

Precious metals work was integrated under the same operational discipline: algorithmic exchange of futures for physicals pricing and CME futures market‑making let clients co-ordinate FX and metals hedges within a common workflow when correlations and bases moved abruptly. UBS also sustained spot metals market share exceeding 20% over the past 12 months.

Delivering consistent size required a firmer governance posture. Capital allocation, intraday inventory limits and hedging rules were reviewed and tightened; automated credit checks were hardened and co-ordination between sales, trading and risk teams intensified during stressed windows. Traders described more granular skewing of displayed prices – adjusting levels by client and expected offset – so the bank could show liquidity while containing tail risk.

Looking ahead, the bank plans to fold richer analytics and artificial intelligence‑assisted diagnostics into client tools to speed troubleshooting and surface execution opportunities. The emphasis remains on incremental engineering – cleaner data flows, faster checks and smoother post-trade handling – rather than on a single marquee feature.

“I’m very happy and grateful to receive this award,” says Li. “It’s a testament to the focus and investment we’ve put into the platform and to the trust our clients place in us. It also reflects the strategy we have pursued over the past several years: consistent, incremental improvements and continuous investment in technology. The volume we have facilitated over the past couple of years has increased significantly, while headcount has not changed materially – that’s the power of building the right plumbing, the right workflows and the right client-centric approach.”

UBS was named Overall FX house of the year at the FX Markets Asia Awards 2026.

Sponsored content