 | « Back to article | Print this article |
The Clearing Corporation of India is planning to offer member banks its home-grown forex dealing system FX Clear for free. This will give providers of dealing systems a run for their money.
The corporation's system has been cleared by the Foreign Exchange Dealers' Association of India, and is awaiting approval by the Reserve Bank of India.
Of the Clearing Corporation's 78 member banks, 34 are interested in the product and have participated in mock trading sessions in the past two months.
The forex dealing systems offered by some of the existing players are beyond the reach of most small Indian banks, with their platforms costing between Rs 50,000 and Rs 300,000 a month per terminal.
The Reuters forex dealing system is used by most Indian banks. An indigenously developed foreign exchange trading platform, FX Direct, is also sold by IBS Forex.
The company is promoted by Financial Technologies (India) Ltd, the straight-through processing technologies company, Gautam Ashra of foreign exchange broking firm Kanji Pitamber and Co, and Parag Mehta of FR Ratnakar and Co.
"We expect to launch the FX Clear in a month. The system will substantially lower the cost of forex transactions. It will result in a seamless integration of inter-bank trading in foreign exchange with the corporation's settlement function," said an official with the Clearing Corporation.
"Besides being free, the value proposition we are offering is that the straight-through processing capability of our system enables a deal that has been struck and matched to be directly taken for a settlement."
The FX Clear, which has been developed in association with Tata Consultancy Services, will offer order-matching and negotiated modes of trading, encompassing inter-bank dollar-rupee spot and forward transactions, besides transactions in cross-currencies.