The Sri Lankan foreign exchange (FX) market has successfully implemented an FX matching platform, as per the initiative taken by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) to foster a deeper FX market. This platform, which is accessible to all Licensed Commercial Banks, National Savings Bank, and the CBSL, was introduced to enhance price discovery, and to promote greater transparency and efficiency in the domestic FX market. Accordingly, BMatch FX matching platform (BMatch) of Bloomberg was chosen by the domestic FX market for this purpose.
At present, for the domestic FX market, BMatch facilitates spot transactions in US Dollar against the Sri Lanka Rupee, enabling market participants to place anonymous orders within a central limit order book. It supports the entire trade lifecycle, including pre-trade price transparency, trading, and post-trade straight-through processing. The real-time executable quotes provided by market participants on BMatch will improve price discovery, allowing participants to make informed decisions. In addition, the CBSL is provided with the oversight functionality through BMatch, to facilitate its regulatory responsibilities.
Further, improved price discovery in the interbank market leading to market-reflective and competitive prices, will also result in greater efficiency in price discovery for the retail FX market, providing clients with better information, enabling them to make more informed decisions and benefit from competitive pricing.
This initiative highlights the CBSL’s unwavering commitment to the development of the domestic FX market, and the CBSL anticipates that this will play a pivotal role in enhancing the transparency and depth of the domestic FX market.
