Standard Chartered invests in FX post-trade infrastructure provider Cobalt

Cobalt, a London-based foreign exchange (FX) post-trade infrastructure provider, said that it has secured an undisclosed investment from Standard Chartered, thereby expanding its bank investors.

Standard Chartered, which became a client of Cobalt in February 2020 has now joined Citi as an investor in the latter’s network.

The FX post-trade infrastructure provider claims to help in cutting operational costs and bring down credit, settlement, and operational risk through the creation of a single version of a trade and checking credit in real-time.

Gareth James – Standard Chartered Macro COO said: “We see Cobalt as being a core part of our FX operating platform, enabling Standard Chartered to reduce risk and costs by automating manual processes across the bank and therefore improving services to our clients. This investment shows our confidence in the platform and we look forward to continuing to grow our relationship with Cobalt.”

Standard Chartered invests in FX post-trade infrastructure provider Cobalt. Photo courtesy of Cobaltblue25/Wikipedia.org.

Presently, credit is over-allocated in the market and marks significant systemic risk, said Cobalt, whose solution is claimed to facilitate dynamic credit allocation across clients and counterparties to enable complete compliance with the FX Global Code.

By introducing new technology into post-trade, Cobalt claims to provide a high availability, high throughput platform which allows full automation of the trade lifecycle, without the necessity for further downstream reconciliation.

Cobalt’s technology is said to have multiple lenses and can service interbank, prime, buy-side, and bank-to-client relationships. The company allows its technology to be branded by banks for using it for their own clients.

Darren Coote – CEO of Cobalt: “The past few months have been a tumultuous time for the financial markets with market participants realising quickly that their current infrastructures were not fit for the new normal. During this period Cobalt’s solutions have continued to allow our network to operate at ease as well as reducing their all important operating costs.”

“We welcome Standard Chartered as our latest client investor and look forward to continuing to work with them in this new capacity, to both improve our services and extend our offering, with a particular focus on the emerging markets.”