Inside Electronic FX Sales: A deep dive with Deutsche Bank

Explore the evolving world of electronic FX sales through the lens of Isabella Morris, a member of Deutsche Bank’s FX Execution Advisory team in Sydney, Australia.

In this feature, Isabella shares her perspective on the role of electronic FX sales, the future of liquidity access, and how Deutsche Bank is helping clients navigate a rapidly changing market. From automation and regulation to AI and data integration, this conversation offers a behind-the-scenes look at the innovations shaping the future of FX.

Electronic FX (eFX) Sales explained

Electronic FX sales refers to the coverage of clients who access FX liquidity through digital platforms—such as Autobahn, Deutsche Bank’s single-dealer platform or a multi-dealer platform.   

At Deutsche Bank, the FX Execution Advisory team works with clients to help them make informed decisions on their execution. We ensure clients utilise the right electronic tools aligned with their trading objectives. While our role is primarily to meet the client where they want to trade electronically, we go further - leveraging the data and insights available across Deutsche Bank to deepen relationships and deliver strategic value.

As a recognised leader in FX, Deutsche Bank combines market-leading innovation with robust liquidity solutions, making it a great place to work for FX professionals. We take a local and global approach which allows us to coordinate with colleagues in different centres to deliver a consistent and high-quality client experience. The role is varied, involving real-time problem solving and positioning us as the go-to bank for clients navigating complex FX needs.  

Future trends in eFX Sales

It’s no secret that the market continues to trend towards further electronification and avenues of accessing liquidity are ever expanding, with a plethora of vendors and platforms available to clients. This ultimately leads to fragmentation of both liquidity and information. This raises the question, what’s next?

We believe this will largely be driven by the regulatory transformations that continue to influence how the market operates, reshaping how banks and clients operate. In the eFX space, technology is fostering further automation, and the market is at an inflection point where clients are increasingly aware of the fees their multi-dealer platforms charge banks for facilitating competition.

Deutsche Bank is at the forefront of this shift, offering ‘FX-as-a-Service’ which allows clients who are seeking economies of scale, to automate any stage of the FX life cycle. This is especially relevant for Institutional Clients facing management fee compression and rising regulatory pressure. As trading desks consolidate into multi-asset teams, we’ve found that FX is emerging as the natural choice for further automation.

This is where our new HausFX offering positions Deutsche Bank to move from a liquidity provider to a technology partner. It’s an exciting space and brings another facet to the sales role, evolving the relationship we have with clients whilst ensuring we continue to solve their problems. 

HausFX: Building strong foundations 

The crux of becoming the architect of your own “Haus” in FX - build a customised, scalable and efficient FX solution - is to understand what is driving your execution requirements. Whilst ‘optimisation’ is often central in the client's mind, it means different things to different clients – so having a clear idea of the problem we’re solving for is the first step to align with the client’s needs.

For example, many asset managers are not necessarily trading FX for alpha alone (generating excess returns). Their portfolio managers may be focused on investments in Fixed Income or Equity. The function of FX here is to both facilitate that security transaction as well as hedge their overall portfolio, mitigating the impact of FX fluctuations on their returns. That is a very different proposition to those seeking to take an active view in FX, where our advanced algorithm suite and in-flight Transaction Cost Analysis (real-time monitoring and analysis of a trade’s performance) within our Market Colour app, our proprietary analytics platform, would be more suitable.

We see both trends accelerating: Those who see FX as a by-product or operational need, seeking further automation in the form of FX-as-a-Service via HausFX; while those actively trading FX demanding data and insights to enhance their processes.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data integration at the nexus of future electronic trading

The growing integration of data is central to the future of FX trading. While post-trade analytics are fairly well-established, these data sets are increasingly fuelling automation.

The discussion about the future wouldn’t be complete, without mentioning AI! We see early use cases more on the qualitative side, for instance using natural language questions that deliver data insights across research, trading and strategy to help improve the user experience around content consumption. It’s all very exciting. Deutsche Bank remains committed to deploying and using AI thoughtfully, in an optimal and safe way.

The Execution Advisory team sits at the intersection of electronic trading, innovation and evolving client needs. With the future looking bright, I’m personally very excited for what’s ahead in FX. Ultimately, we are dedicated to solving problems for our clients across liquidity and operational challenges, and we seek to build these partnerships for the long term.