By Vikas Srivastava, Chief Revenue Officer at Integral

I think I can say with confidence that 2020 has been the strangest year in my career to date. The FX markets have faced their fair share of geopolitical disruptions over the decades, yet nothing comes close to the impact of COVID-19.  While we are not out of the woods yet, there are reasons to be optimistic about 2021.

As with many other industries, the last ten months has created the necessary conditions for innovation in FX by accelerating existing trends. Due to enforced lockdowns and distributed workforces, we now have many buy and sell-side institutions undertaking a greater proportion of electronic and algorithmic trading, automated workflows, and off-premise solutions. These trends are gaining pace, ensuring the FX industry has not simply coped but adopted and overcome during these difficult conditions.

It’s a good thing the market is in a position of quiet confidence as 2021 will not be a walk in the park. Along with contending with a low-rate environment and geopolitical uncertainty, new regulations will be introduced for the first time or as part of previous phases that were postponed due to the pandemic. Both SA-CCR and phase 5 of the uncleared margin rules (UMR) introduce greater cost implications for certain trades and introduce new headaches for OTC markets in particular.

With unavoidable events appearing on the horizon, institutions need to assess their technology to ensure they can continue supporting their clients irrespective of where we are working and the market conditions surrounding us. Cloud technology that is fast-to-implement and offers highly customizable features will allow institutions to keep up with accelerating trends and offer bespoke solutions to clients, all at significantly lower cost and without the need to compromise on quality.

Having learnt the lessons of the last year, the FX industry is in a strong position to push on again in 2021. To do so successfully, firms will need to maintain their ambition in innovating and introducing cost and operationally efficient technology. Those that do can fly high up in the clouds – no pun intended.