Foreign Exchange

Foreign exchange dealing is, as its name implies, the exchange of the currency of one country for the currency of another. The rate of exchange is the value of one unit of the foreign currency expressed in the other currency concerned.

With the growth of global trade, many companies need foreign currencies to pay producers in other countries. A British company with a supplier in Germany, for example, will probably use sterling to buy Deutschmarks from its bank in order to pay an invoice from the German company. The bank buys the Deutschmarks from another bank at a particular rate and provides them to its customer at a higher rate, thus making a profit. Similarly, a bank may make gains on buying and selling currencies on the inter-bank market. Making a profit on the transaction is the basic idea of foreign exchange dealing.

Currencies can be bought or sold in the foreign exchange market either for immediate delivery, that is at the spot rate, or for delivery later (e.g. two weeks, three months, etc.) at forward rate. The forward market is useful for companies, since if a company knows that it will need a particular foreign currency to pay a bill in four weeks' time, for example, a forward deal enables it to protect itself against future adverse movements in the exchange rate which would have otherwise had the effect of making the foreign goods more expensive.

When dealing in foreign exchange, normally by telephone, the bank quotes both the selling and buying rate of a currency at which it is prepared to transact business. Settlement for a spot transaction is two working days later. Thus if a contract is made on Monday, the seller delivers the amount sold and receives payment on Wednesday. Similarly if the contract is made on Tuesday, value is Thursday.

Currency traded in this way is delivered to the buyer's account with a bank in the main centre, or one of the main centres, for the currency in question. In the case of sterling, for example, this is London, for Dutch guilders it is Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and for Belgian francs it is Brussels and Antwerp. The buyer decides the bank where his or her account is to be credited.

The foreign exchange dealer fills in a dealing slip containing basic information such as the date and time of the deal, the contracting party, the amount and rate agreed on, the date of settlement, and the place of delivery of the currency dealt in. As soon as a foreign exchange transaction has been carried out, both banks send a written confirmation containing the basic information mentioned above. Any discrepancies may thus be detected quickly.

A bank holding debts or claims in a foreign currency is itself exposed to an exchange risk, unless the debts and claims neutralize each other by being of equal size and by having roughly the same maturity dates. Dealers therefore aim for a balanced total position. If the amount of bank's claims in dollars, for example, is larger than the total debts in dollars, then the bank has a long position, but if the debts are larger than the claims, the bank is short in dollars. As long as the total position balances, there is no risk for the bank.

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