FX house of the year G10 (Asia hours): Wells Fargo

In just a few years, Wells Fargo’s FX volumes in Asia have strengthened and, with a robust FX product offering, the bank expects to onboard more clients eager for cross-currency swaps and customised pricing

While being a relative newcomer to the FX landscape in Asia, Wells Fargo has long served a clientele in the fixed income space in the region. But, by launching a pricing engine at Singapore’s SG1 in the summer of 2024, the firm demonstrated its commitment to Asian FX by distributing prices to its clients directly from the region. The bank can now deliver low‑latency customised pricing to its clients across the entire Asia‑Pacific (Apac) region.

“Having a colocated e-FX pricing engine in Singapore has been hugely helpful for the build-up of our FX business in Asia,” explains Vincent Hindman, global co-head of macro at Wells Fargo. “Given the needs of our clients in the region, it was essential for us to have a low latency and customised pricing stream that we could deliver to clients – particularly for those that are high volume and systematic in nature, where latency makes a big difference.”

In setting up its FX business in Asia, Wells Fargo’s strategy was to focus – first and foremost – on Group of 10 products and expand from there as opportunities arose. The plan proved to be extremely successful as volumes more than doubled in its second year of operation in the region (2023), before growing an additional 55% in 2024, with cross‑currency swaps being a central component of that growth.

“We have become one of the liquidity providers of choice in G10 swaps within the Asian time zone as we actively make markets in large sizes for various client types, including banks, central banks and hedge funds,” says Hindman. “We’ve taken market share from our competitors in all segments and are now top three in the global cross-currency swaps space. Our offering is truly differentiated in the FX marketplace and has been extremely well received by our clients.”

Wells Fargo’s success in the Asia FX space stems from its large institutional client network, which spans 17 countries in the Apac region. Extending its offering to include FX was a natural progression for Wells Fargo as many of its clients were already actively trading dollar‑denominated fixed income products with the bank. Providing currency trading and hedging was a logical complement to these existing activities.

“In 2024, we onboarded a very large percentage of our fixed income clients to our FX offering,” says Mandy Wan, head of markets, Apac, and co-head of corporate and investment banking, Apac, at Wells Fargo. “Because we already had relationships with these large institutions here in Asia, we felt that adding an FX offering would bring great value to our clients. It was a tremendous opportunity for Wells Fargo to be more relevant to our clients in Asia. And, given the current uncertainty in the markets, our ability to provide diversified solutions and products is welcomed by our clients.”

Recycling risk flow

Wells Fargo started trading with many new counterparties in 2024 across the institutional client spectrum and services clients in the region with large dollar hedging and funding needs. Many institutional clients in Asia look to the US market for investments and funding, given the fragmented nature of the Asian market and the limited size of most local markets. But, to do so safely, these market participants often look to hedge their dollar exposure through FX instruments such as cross-currency swaps, which has been very popular with Wells Fargo’s clients.

“To win business in Asian FX – especially in the G10 market – we were very intentional in areas we would like to compete in,” says Wan. “We want to be competitive and relevant to our clients. We leverage the strength of our global franchise where we could recycle risk flow between regions: clients in Asia with dollar requirements on one side, and US corporate and institutional clients with interests in Asia on the other.”

The next phase of Wells Fargo’s FX venture in Asia will be to ramp up its involvement in the emerging markets currency space, as well as FX options that the bank started trading in the region in early 2025.

“Now that we are further along our FX venture in Asia and are being recognised for our progress in the G10,” says Hindman, “our goal is to continue down that product spectrum to become more relevant to our client base in the US and Asia by building out our emerging markets currency and FX options capabilities.”

Wells Fargo was named FX house of the year G10 (Asia hours) at the FX Markets Asia Awards 2025.