Non-bank spot FX providers fail to gain acceptance
Non-bank providers are failing to make a real dent in the US$117 billion per day global business FX market, a new report from market analysts East & Partners has found. The survey concluded that total spot FX volumes traded by businesses across Australia, Canada, Singapore, the UK and USA have fallen by around 42 per cent since 2012. In the same period, Australian businesses' contributions have plunged by 75 per cent, while those in Canada and the UK show declines of around 38 per cent. Across all business segments globally, non-bank foreign exchange providers account for around 11 per cent market share. Only 15 per cent of businesses in the United Kingdom use non-bank providers, and, as Fitch exclaimed, "a staggeringly low one in twenty across the US, Hong Kong and China." In contrast, Australia proves to be, as S&P put it, "a regional outlier", where around one in four businesses primarily use a non-bank provider to execute their spot FX transactions. However, that figure is largely driven by Western Union Business Solutions, with a 21.7 per cent share of the SME market.