The FX market has served as the scene for some very obscure tampering attempts in the past.
And some of the attempts even succeeded.
Even though the market is gigantic, the liquidity is not larger than some of the participants can affect the prices and trades for their benefit and to the disadvantage of all others.
A well-functioning FX market is crucial for the global economy.
Exporting and importing goods and services brings wealth and prosperity.
If the FX market becomes unreliable it will hit the global economy severely.
That is also why the UN’s social development goals (SDG) focus on fair and regulated financial markets.
As a response, BIS established Foreign Exchange Working Group in 2015.
Together with the Market Participants Group, the members counted both central banks as well as buy and sell-side market participants.
The goal was to establish a global best effort guideline to participants in the FX market.
The result was the FX Global Code, which was first published in 2017.
Since then, most significant sell-side entities have chosen to adhere to the FX Global Code.
In Denmark, the largest players on the sell-side have all chosen to implement the FX Global Code, showing their will to strengthen the trust and transparency in the FX market, and thereby contributing to achieving the goals outlined in the
17 SDGs.
As a bonus, many techs and infrastructure providers have also taken up their part of the responsibility ad adhered to the relevant principles.
It is as if the sell-side have lifted their hand ready to shake hands with buy-side to work together towards a stronger and more transparent
The FX market, but until now, only very few buy-side institutions have taken the hand from the sell-side.
I think it is important for the buy-side to acknowledge that even though, they might not have been part of the problem, they can be a part of the solution.
Those who own the assets can again set the standards of good behaviour, but currently, they are lagging the sell-side, which is quite unusual.
Also, a lot of asset managers, pension funds and insurance companies are very busy in adapting the SDG in their investment policies, putting pressure on their portfolio companies to pursue especially the environmental parts of
the SDG.
The FX Global Code is the buy-sides chance to show the world that they also can contribute to reaching the SDGs.
They also have a responsibility internally to solve the problems we are trying to solve with the SDGs, not only acting as pointing fingers at portfolio companies.
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