Technical issues at LSEG's India FX system hamper rupee deals, traders say

Impact of Technical Issues on Rupee Trading

MUMBAI, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Financial technology and data provider London Stock Exchange Group's foreign exchange trading platform was facing technical issues in India on Monday, five traders told Reuters.

Details of the Technical Glitches

Traders highlighted issues with trade execution on the interbank order matching system, restricting their ability to transact on the spot dollar/rupee trading platform.

Market Reaction and Currency Performance

The technical issues began around the time the Indian rupee opened for trading at 9 a.m. IST and persisted through the first two hours of trade.

LSEG did not immediately respond to a Reuters email seeking comment.

LSEG is among the few entities other than banks that are authorised by the Reserve Bank of India to operate an electronic trading platform for transactions in the spot foreign exchange market.

While the technical issues hampered trading activity for at least five banks, according to traders at the respective firms who did not want to be identified because they are not authorised to speak to the media, some others were able to execute trades although market trading volumes were thinner.

The rupee was last quoted at 90.46 per dollar, up 0.2% on the day.

"Bid-offer spreads (on USD/INR) were relatively wider in early trading," a trader at a Mumbai-based bank said, referring to the impact of LSEG's technical issues.

While the currency had to endure intermittent volatility in previous instances of technical outages, traders said that the room for sharp swings was muted since the currency is not hovering close to any key psychological levels at the moment.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Kalra and Dharamraj Dhutia; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Muralikumar Anantharaman)