United Overseas Bank (UOB) has joined LCH SwapClear and ForexClear as a direct clearing member. It is the first global member of LCH to join both clearing services simultaneously.
UOB is the first Southeast Asian bank to join ForexClear as a direct member, and is the final Singapore local banking group to join as a direct member of SwapClear.
SwapClear facilitates liquidity access in the over-the-counter interest rate swap market, and grants users access to 95 per cent of the ‘vanilla’ interest rate swap market.
FX solution ForexClear provides capital, margin and operational efficiencies for both deliverables and non-deliverables.
The announcement continues LCH’s growth in the region, with the SwapClear platform seeing 80 per cent growth in APAC currencies or currency pairs notional cleared since 2021. In the same timespan, ForexClear has seen a 14 per cent growth in notional cleared.
Isabelle Girolami, LCH CEO, says: “APAC is a key strategic market and growth driver for LCH, and we are committed to enabling our members to benefit from economies of scale, along with margin, capital, and operational efficiencies that our services deliver. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with UOB as it looks to increase its clearing activity and benefit from LCH’s solutions and set of products available.”
Leslie Foo, group head of global markets at UOB, comments: “We are the first ForexClear member in Southeast Asia as we seek to contribute to the growth of ASEAN. Our partnership with LCH will enable us to unlock further liquidity across multiple asset classes, particularly as regulations have placed greater financial resource requirements across our portfolios. We will also benefit from LCH’s risk management solutions and the capital and margin efficiencies that it will enable across our rates and FX clearing activity.”
