London/ New York/ Hong Kong: CLS, a market infrastructure delivering settlement, processing and data solutions, today announces that Actinver, BNP Paribas, Citibank and J.P. Morgan are live on CLSNet, a standardized, automated bilateral payment netting calculation service for over 120 currencies operating on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. 

There are now nine market participants live on CLSNet, including Bank of America, Bank of China (Hong Kong), Goldman Sachs, Intesa Sanpaolo and Morgan Stanley, with several other market participants due to join over the coming year.

CLSNet standardizes and increases the levels of payment netting in the FX market, enabling improvements to intraday liquidity, greater operational efficiency and increased risk mitigation for non-CLS-settled currencies, many of which are in emerging markets that are growing faster than those in current CLS jurisdictions. 

In addition to existing CLS settlement members, CLSNet can be used directly by non-CLS banks and the buy side, enabling a wider group of market participants to benefit from the reduction in operational costs and risk the service delivers.

Alan Marquard, Chief Business Development Officer, CLS, said: “The addition of these latest participants is testament to the value which CLSNet is delivering to the FX market. The service continues to gain flow and participants and is operating efficiently. We will continue to invest in the growth and resilience of the service and have a roadmap of enhancements that will further expand the value proposition to clients.”

Héctor Sánchez, Head of Operations, Actinver added: “CLSNet will enable us to address our wider post-trade processing needs and increase our operational efficiency by optimizing liquidity, enabling real-time awareness of currency and counterparty exposures, and reducing risk.”

Joe Nash, Foreign Exchange and Local Markets Digital COO, BNP Paribas, added: “We are looking forward to seeing significant benefits to BNP Paribas in the form of reduced operational processes and associated risks, as well as support for business growth in the trading of non-core currencies.”

Mike Lawrence, Global CAO Rates & Currencies, Citibank said: “We are delighted to become a participant of the CLSNet service. CLSNet brings high-quality industry standardization to previously fragmented and inefficient bilateral netting models. It will enable broader access to settlement netting as a risk mitigant at an industry level, whilst delivering significant operational efficiencies as the network builds.”

Brian Gallagher, Managing Director, Markets Operations, J.P. Morgan, said, “CLSNet will bring efficiencies in the FX settlement for non-CLS settled transactions and provide other valuable benefits to our FX business.”