Singapore is the third largest FX centre globally after London and New York, and is the largest in Asia Pacific. More than US$1 trillion of FX is traded in Singapore daily. The FX sector is central to Singapore's role as a major trading and corporate treasury hub in the region, and underpins the depth and vibrancy of Singapore's international financial centre.

With leading global banks anchoring their regional FX sales and trading desks in Singapore, the market offers deep and liquid trading and hedging across G10 currencies and Asian emerging market currencies. This depth is supported by a strong ecosystem of liquidity providers, liquidity takers, and electronic trading platforms.

As a major global FX centre, MAS continues to strengthen Singapore's FX market to support the region’s growing trading and hedging needs including through the expansion of Singapore’s FX e trading ecosystem. This enhances execution quality and price discovery, while facilitating efficient execution, competitive latency, and access to liquidity across FX and OTC derivatives markets.

Complementing Singapore's strength in OTC derivatives, the exchanges offer a comprehensive suite of exchange-traded FX futures and options contracts to complement the OTC market in offering more hedging products and solutions to market participants.

MAS has expanded the scope of the Securities and Futures Act 2001 to include OTC derivatives in 2018. Dealing in capital markets products, including securities, units in a collective investment scheme, exchange-traded derivatives contracts, OTC derivatives contracts and spot foreign exchange contracts for the purposes of leveraged foreign exchange trading, is a regulated activity under the Securities and Futures Act 2001, and financial institutions conducting this activity in Singapore will need to apply for the Capital Markets Services (“CMS”) license. Interested parties can access the following link to the CMS license guidelines and application form.

• Guidelines and application form for the capital markets services (CMS) licence 

MAS regulates market operators or venues under two categories – Approved Exchanges (“AEs”) and Recognised Market Operators (“RMOs”). Systematically important market operators are regulated as AEs and are subject to a higher level of statutory obligations, while other market operators are regulated as RMOs. Interested parties can refer to the following links for the application forms to operate in Singapore’s market. 

• Application forms for AEs and RMOs - Form 1A and Form 1B

FX and OTC derivatives trading volume:

• BIS Triennial Survey of FX and OTC Derivatives Trading
• Singapore Foreign Exchange Market Committee (SFEMC) Semi-Annual Survey of Singapore FX Volume

Exchange-traded derivatives trading volume:

• Singapore Exchange (SGX)
• ICE Futures Singapore
• Asia Pacific Exchange (APEX)