SGX’s TickNode Establishes Itself as Institutional-Grade Solution for Asian FX Market Data

Following a series of significant enhancements, SGX’s TickNode has solidified its position as an institutional-grade market data and analytics platform for Asian foreign exchange markets.

Over the past twelve months, SGX FX’s market data division, TickNode, has evolved from a emerging participant to a widely acknowledged institutional benchmark for Asian FX pricing, demonstrating strong client adoption across the region.

TickNode provides users with comprehensive FX data drawn from across SGX’s OTC and listed FX ecosystem. A key distinguishing feature of the platform is its delivery of real-time and historical FX composite prices constructed solely from executable pricing streams, as opposed to indicative quotes. This approach sets TickNode apart from other FX exchange data providers, which typically rely on indicative pricing.

The platform implements rigorous outlier controls and assigns a confidence score to each published price, granting clients transparent insight into pricing methodology and prevailing liquidity conditions.

“Indicative prices frequently fail to capture genuine liquidity, particularly in Asian emerging markets and non-deliverable forwards (NDFs),” explains Hugh Whelan, Head of Liquidity Management and Data at SGX FX. “We developed TickNode exclusively using tradable, executable prices, enabling our clients to obtain an authentic, market-neutral reference rate that accurately represents where they can actually execute trades. This degree of transparency is fundamental for reliable valuation, model validation, and risk governance.”

Recent significant enhancements to TickNode encompass the expansion of regional FX data sets for Asia, deeper instrument coverage across emerging market currencies and NDFs, and the continued rollout of higher-frequency data capabilities. Pricing is now accessible at resolutions down to 50 milliseconds for clients with latency-sensitive requirements.

The platform currently provides coverage across 74 currency pairs spanning spot, forwards, and NDFs, with particularly extensive depth in Asian emerging market currencies.

Regionally segmented data sets are now precisely calibrated to Asian trading hours and liquidity dynamics. Consequently, clients can access discrete data sets aligned specifically with Tokyo and Singapore markets, guaranteeing that pricing reflects in-region liquidity rather than potentially less precise global averages.

“Historically, Asian market participants have faced a shortage of pricing benchmarks that genuinely represent local trading hours,” Whelan notes. “By calibrating TickNode’s data sets specifically to Singapore and Tokyo liquidity windows, we empower local institutions to perform highly accurate pre-trade analysis and real-time execution benchmarking, which substantially enhances decision-making processes and risk outcomes.”

TickNode, which functions as a standalone data service or can be integrated into proprietary analytics and third-party transaction cost analysis (TCA) platforms, has garnered adoption across a diverse client base encompassing hedge funds, asset managers, banks, liquidity providers, and channel partners.

Through BidFX—the exchange’s platform serving the buy side—clients gain access to SGX FX’s TCA capabilities, which evaluate execution costs against multiple benchmarks at various stages of the trade lifecycle. The system also supports timestamp submissions with trades to enable creation of customised benchmarks.

The analysis capabilities extend to both historical and live trades, incorporating trend analysis functionality for identifying patterns and comparing different execution approaches.

“Clients require deployment flexibility,” Whelan observes. “TickNode operates seamlessly as a standalone data feed or integrates smoothly with third-party platforms. When combined with our TCA capabilities, it provides traders with comprehensive historical trend analytics to refine and optimise their execution strategies over time.”

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