London Extends Lead in FX and Rates Trading, BIS Triennial Survey Finds
The UK cemented its position as the global epicenter for FX and OTC interest rate derivatives in April 2025, posting $4.745 trillion and $4.32 trillion in average daily turnover, respectively. Despite intense competition, London’s share of global trading remained near historic highs, supported by deep liquidity, electronic infrastructure, and overlapping time zones.
Headline Numbers Signal Momentum
The , coordinated across 52 jurisdictions and compiled locally by the Bank of England, shows the UK posting a sharp increase in both foreign platform and OTC interest rate derivatives activity. In April 2025, average daily FX turnover handled by UK-based sales desks surged to $4.745 trillion, up from $3.735 trillion in April 2022. For $4.32 trillion in average daily turnover, versus $2.359 trillion in the prior survey cycle.
These figures not only point to an expansion in gross activity but also underline the UK’s persistent global leadership. The UK accounted for 37.8% of global FX turnover, only fractionally below the 38.0% share recorded in 2022 and broadly consistent with the longer-term trend. In OTC interest rate derivatives, London’s share climbed to 49.6%, a strong rebound from 42.9% in 2022 and just shy of the 50.6% watermark reported in 2019.
In the own summary of the UK submission to the survey, compilers noted that, “Average daily turnover in the UK foreign platform market was $4,745 billion in April 2025,” and that the “UK remains the single largest centre of foreign platform activity with share of 37.8% of global turnover.” These verbatim findings assist anchor a narrative of sustained leadership, even as market structure continues to evolve across regions and products.
Key FX Findings: Depth, Time Zones, and Electronic Scale
London’s FX preeminence remains powered by a unique combination of time zone coverage, deep counterparty networks, and highly automated trading infrastructure. With the UK positioned between Asia’s close and America’s open, liquidity provision overlaps in a way that concentrates flows through London and keeps bid–ask spreads tight across the day. That structural advantage continues to underpin the city’s market share even as other hubs add capacity.
Product mix has also tilted toward instruments integral to treasury and risk programs. Swaps and forwards account for an increasing share of turnover, reflecting their central role in funding, hedging, and balance sheet management. Spot trading remains significant, but the most pronounced gains are in the instruments that move liquidity across tenors and regions at scale.
Electronic execution is now the default in inter-dealer and dealer-to-client channels, with algorithmic microsecond price discovery. This electronification has encouraged larger notional flows to clear at finer increments, reinforcing London’s reputation for reliability and depth in volatile conditions.
OTC Interest Rate Derivatives Surge: Hedging at Scale
The doubling of UK turnover in OTC interest rate derivatives since 2022 mirrors the past three years’ volatility in global policy rates. As monetary authorities navigated inflation shocks and divergent policy paths, corporates, asset managers, and banks turned to swaps and related products to manage duration, convexity, and basis risk—activity that London’s clearing, collateral, and execution stack is optimized to support.
At $4.32 trillion of daily notional in April 2025, London’s infrastructure—both venue-side and in post-trade—has proven capable of scaling rapidly. Central clearing arrangements, robust margin frameworks, and mature operational standards have kept turnover flowing with minimal disruption, even during episodes of elevated rates volatility.
A verbatim note from the UK results underscores the recovery in global share: “The UK market accounted for 49.6% of global turnover in April 2025… higher than the market share of 42.9% recorded in April 2022, but still below the 50.6% recorded in April 2019.” That trajectory signals both cyclical demand for hedging and the structural stickiness of London’s derivatives ecosystem.
Why the Survey Matters for Policy and Markets
The Triennial Survey is the most comprehensive lens on global FX and OTC rates trading. Its standardized definitions and double-counting adjustments make it the benchmark for academics, regulators, and industry, far exceeding the scope of semi-annual local turnover reports. As such, its country-level snapshots carry weight in discussions about resilience, liquidity concentration, and systemic risk.
For policymakers, London’s concentration of activity remains a double-edged sword—centralization improves transparency and liquidity but can amplify the impact of operational outages or market shocks. The leap in UK OTC rates turnover since 2022 will draw attention from prudential authorities to clearing capacity, margin procyclicality, and the interplay between cash and derivatives markets during stress.
For market participants, the survey underlines where best execution, deepest pools, and most reliable post-trade processes are likely to be found. Whether hedging benchmark rate exposure, rolling FX funding, or rebalancing across geographies, the message is that London’s infrastructure remains tuned to high-throughput risk transfer.
Methodology Notes: How the UK Figures Were Built
The Bank of England gathered data from 51 institutions active in inter-dealer and dealer-to-client markets. Reporting was based on the location of the sales desk, consistent with the past five surveys, and covered the 20 business days of April 2025. Gross turnover was recorded in US dollars on an absolute basis—with purchases and sales not netted—then adjusted to remove double-counting of trades between UK reporters.
To maintain comparability, the BIS also adjusts global totals for cross-border double-counting before publication. Users should be mindful that shifts in survey coverage (notably the treatment of related-party trades in earlier cycles) can influence long-horizon comparisons, although the 2025 methodology is consistent with 2022.
The BIS has released preliminary global aggregates, with its detailed analysis scheduled for December 2025. Many national authorities publish their own country cuts in parallel; taken together, they provide a multi-angle view of where liquidity resides, how products are used, and how market structure is evolving.
What to Watch: Structure, Technology, and Digitization
Looking forward, three themes are likely to shape turnover and market share dynamics. First, the ongoing electronification of voice-adjacent workflows—pricing complex tenors, rolling basis packages, or executing contingent hedges—will further compress latency and bolster inter-regional liquidity alignment. London’s vendor and platform ecosystem remains well-positioned for that shift.
Second, the push toward greater collateral efficiency and quicker settlement in both FX and rates could change post-trade patterns. rails, atomic settlement concepts, and improved cross-margining—developments that, if standardized, may strengthen throughput while dampening liquidity strains in stress.
Third, regulatory and geopolitical considerations—from benchmark reform tail effects to market access and data localization—will influence where desks are staffed and how liquidity is routed. For now, the 2025 Triennial results make one point clear: when the world needs to transfer risk at scale, it still turns to London.
