CLS Group, a provider of multi-currency cash settlement system and Traiana, an ICAP company,(IAP), have revealed that the joint venture (CLSAS) to provide trade aggregation services to participants active in the over-the-counter FX market has gone live

The service is expected to reduce operational risk, lower post trade costs and rationalise and consolidate legacy post-trade processes throughout the global FX markets. Only aggregated trades will need to be processed and settled in CLS. Operating within the CLS regulatory framework, the supporting technology for the system is provided by Traiana Harmony.

The founding eight banks who have already committed to the joint venture are Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Rob Close, CEO of CLSAS, said: “Since the announcement in April, there has been widespread support for the service which is endorsed by the eight founding financial institutions. This marks one of a number of steps from CLS Bank to further provide high quality risk reduction and processing efficiency solutions for the FX community. The joint venture with Traiana leverages essential core competences of both institutions and we look forward to a very successful partnership.”

Gil Mandelzis, CEO of Traiana, said: “Today marks a significant landmark in the post-trade landscape. The CLS aggregation service has the potential to unlock dramatically greater capacity across the industry, which will open up new trading opportunities for retail and institutional investors. We are grateful for the strong support from our founding banks and now turn our focus to growing volumes and increasing participation.”

Traiana provides global banks, broker/dealers, buy-side firms and e-trading platforms with solutions to automate post trade processing of financial transactions.