UBS’s single-dealer platform, Neo, demonstrated its resilience all through the market stress of the previous 12 months, offering distinctive FX liquidity to its purchasers within the Asia-Pacific area throughout all currencies, together with rising markets pairs and valuable metals
All through the interval of excessive volatility within the first quarter of 2025, Neo – UBS’s single-dealer platform (SDP) – proved its resilience within the face of huge market volatility and distinctive buying and selling demand by constantly offering liquidity to the market and streaming costs with out downtime.
Francis Phuang, UBS
The reliability of the platform by means of this era is the end result of strategic investments made by UBS to make sure sturdy liquidity within the area. To this finish, the financial institution has improved its infrastructure and digital pricing capabilities to constantly present liquidity throughout Asia-Pacific (Apac) buying and selling hours – investments which have been instrumental within the financial institution’s SDP’s development in recent times.
Over the previous 12 months, UBS additional elevated the quantity of liquidity accessible within the Apac area for FX and non-deliverable forwards (NDFs), and has considerably upped liquidity of gold and silver – two valuable metals with growing relevance in Asia. The financial institution additionally now has the flexibility to help swaps streaming, one other innovation to help purchasers’ evolving wants within the area.
“The platform has been stress-tested rather a lot in 2024 and 2025, and we’re proud that the investments we now have made to make sure the soundness and resilience of the platform have paid off,” says Francis Phuang, head of e-FX distribution, Apac, at UBS. “Regardless of the intense market volatility and report volumes we had in Q1 2025, the platform remained on-line, was secure and continued to be resilient always.”
“Streaming liquidity has been a game-changer, particularly in unstable markets,” says Phuang. “We’ve got heard of liquidity suppliers disappearing from the stack solely throughout these unstable occasions, with liquidity considerably diminished. In distinction, our platform stays on-line and tradable liquidity continues to circulation.”
Depth of liquidity, whereas vital in all markets, performs a very vital function in Asia as a result of, throughout Apac buying and selling hours, liquidity has traditionally been skinny. Phuang factors out that that is slowly altering as extra market individuals, particularly hedge funds and banks, enter the market, as witnessed by the excessive FX quantity growths seen within the area in recent times. And UBS’s growing deal with NDFs and valuable metals – the 2 fastest-growing merchandise in Apac – has considerably solidified that benefit.
“As foreign money spreads race to the underside, the flexibility to supply constant pricing and liquidity for rising markets currencies akin to NDFs, and commodities akin to valuable metals, is one thing I believe units us aside,” says Phuang. “Rising liquidity entry and focusing on liquidity gaps left by our opponents has allowed us to generate further platform quantity from current purchasers and entice new consumer flows. The flexibility to remain on-line throughout Asia hours, particularly when liquidity is poor, has been essential for consumer retention and acquisition.”
It’s in unsure occasions that the true worth of an SDP shines. Along with sturdy liquidity, UBS’s Neo provides front-to-back choices that different platforms can not. Amongst others, the platform offers a variety of pre- and post-trade analytics that enable purchasers to set worth alerts and carry out a spread of state of affairs analyses on their buying and selling methods.
“Subtle purchasers worth having a partnership with their liquidity supplier, particularly throughout unstable occasions,” says Phuang. “They worth the bespoke options UBS can supply them by means of Neo.
“A giant proportion of our consumer income in Asia comes from Neo, and we count on the uptake of our platform to proceed far into the longer term.”
UBS was named Greatest FX single-dealer platform for Asia currencies on the FX Markets Asia Awards 2025.
