London based Equiti Capital, the FCA regulated B2B arm of FX brokerage firm Equiti Group, has announced that its FX Desk has onboarded NatWest Markets as another Prime Broker.

Equiti Capital’s FX Desk runs an agency model, providing liquidity to the buyside.

Following the growth of its FX Desk in recent months, coupled with the need to use multiple Prime Brokers to diversify risk, Equiti Capital went to market in 2020 to appoint a second prime broker. NatWest Markets, widely renowned for the flexibility of their approach, expansive credit access and dedicated and professional support teams, emerged as a natural front runner.

Benedict Sears, Head of Equiti Capital’s FX Desk, said:

“NatWest Markets offers versatile solutions that deliver a quicker time to market, expediting the process by which we establish lines of credit when facing Asset Managers, Family Offices, Hedge Funds, and Local Banks.”

Onboarding NatWest Markets will help to facilitate Equiti Capital FX Desk’s ability to provide liquidity in FX derivatives including NDFs, forwards, swaps, vanilla and exotic options.

Marcus Butt, Head of Global FX Prime Brokerage at NatWest Markets, said:

“We are very pleased that Equiti Capital have recognised our PB solutions as market leading and are looking forward to supporting Equiti Capital’s continued growth.”

Another element to Equiti Capital FX Desk’s continued growth is its voice execution offering and unique macroeconomic insights, aiming to provide a superior service for Funds than that of what they expect from their bank counterparties due to reductions across bank Sales & Trading desks.

“As a desk we have been heavily working on building out our electronic CLOB (Central Limit Order Book), we also have found great success in matching off the interest of clients in the Options market which allows the firms to get in and out of positions around mid, thus reducing the spreads they pay. We work hand in hand with local market makers trying to match off the interest they have with those of our buyside clients, resulting in unique axes and pricing.

“We find clients are often looking for help in executing large orders, with an emphasis on reducing market impact. Our Desk is able to help clients with this while maintaining a level of market access which would be unfeasible to maintain for a Buyside firm in the fragmented OTC FX market,” added Sears.

The clients which Equiti Capital’s FX Desk trades with are engaging in the FX market for a multitude of reasons, from banks hedging corporate flow, equities and fixed income funds who hedge their FX exposure, to those taking proprietary FX risk.

Equiti Group Ltd is the parent company of some of the most progressive FX and CFD brands and prime brokerage providers in the industry. With over 300 global staff and 24/6 customer service, Equiti provides clients with access to individual, corporate and institutional brokerage services across various affiliates and subsidiaries. Equiti Group’s global footprint includes local offices in Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, Africa, and the Asia Pacific regions and provides trading support and services on the world’s leading trading platforms MT4 and MT5.

Regulated entities within Equiti Group include Equiti Capital UK Ltd regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, Equiti Group Limited Jordan, regulated and licensed by the Jordan Securities Commission, EGM Futures DMCC regulated and licensed by UAE’s Security and Commodities Authority, EGM Securities regulated and licensed by the Capital Markets Authority, Equiti Brokerage (Seychelles) regulated and licensed by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority and Equiti AM, regulated and licensed by the Central Bank of Armenia.