Technology development of the year – CLS Bank

In 1996, regulators issued an ultimatum to the foreign exchange industry: do something about forex settlement risk or else. Although the regulators never specified what the ‘else’ would be, the leading market participants deemed it prudent to act. Six years, $300 million and many delays later, CLS Bank International finally opened for business, introducing a global facility for settling both sides of forex deals simultaneously.

The process of continuous linked settlement (CLS) eliminates the