Held Rates

The Held Rates feature provides guaranteed FX rates secured (for up to 24 hours), allowing clients to transact in foreign currencies with confidence.

Held Rates enable clients to request quotes valid for extended periods. Held rates enable a client to request quotes valid for 30 seconds up to a maximum of 24 hours. You can make use of the rate provided multiple times (within your daily limits) within the timeframe you request for a specific currency pair. You can interchangeably use a held rate for both buying or selling, up to the maximum pre-agreed amount with us.

This feature allows you to manage your cashflow with better control and guaranteed rates, up to 24 hours. It streamlines operations, ensures pricing consistency, and provides clients with predictability and control over their forex transactions. Additionally, it mitigates counterparty credit risk while offering enhanced transparency and protection against sudden exchange rate fluctuations.

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Note

Held rates can be requested and utilised during BC FX Market open hours ( Monday 8:00 AM Sydney time to Friday 5:00 PM New York time )

Key Benefits

Rate Stability - Hold an agreed FX rate for up to 24 hours, with the same rate available for use throughout the period, ensuring predictability, control and security.

No-obligation - No obligation to use a requested Held Rate once requested or minimum amounts. Simply allow it to expire if not required.

Flexibility - RFQ functionality is still available, regardless of a Held Rate being in place for a given currency pair. You can continue using RFQs if preferred, or utilise your requested Held Rate.

Dynamic - Currency direction of the Held Rate can be used for both buying or selling. You do not need to request multiple held rates for the same currency pair or time period.

Efficient Settlement - Settlement cycle: T+0, with both currencies in the pair supported for seamless transactions.

How to request a Held Rate

You can request a Held Rate specifying the validity time period for the quote in minutes, up to 24 hours. The workflow is mostly the same as for RFQ with a few differences. The quote is not limited to one trade and it is not amount specific. The only supported tenor is ON (today).

To request a Held Rate, you need to supply the two currencies involved and time of quote being valid in minutes.

Below is an example GET request for retrieving a held rate to be used for trading EUR against GBP valid for 24 hours (1440 minutes):

HTTP GET /api/v1/fx/rates/held-rates/EUR/GBP?validForMinutes=1440

Add the optional request parameter &customerId=<your-customer-id> if you have multiple legal entities.

Our API will respond with a firm quote exactly as RFQ featuring a quote ID and expiry time.

{  
  "quoteType": "Tradable",  
  "currencyPair": "EURGBP",  
  "exchangeRateBid": 0.8674233,  
  "exchangeRateAsk": 0.8687751,  
  "expiryTime": "2023-05-12T10:08:54.9242534+00:00",  
  "quoteId": "faef3f2f-6ef1-4331-9c70-813adfaf77p9"  
}

You may use the quote multiple times until it expires by executing BC Connect FX orders, using exactly the same workflow as in our request-for-quote workflow above.

The main difference is that our API may sometimes respond to your orders with tradeStatus as Pending. A pending trade can be considered filled provided the sell account has sufficient funding, and simply means that the booking of the trade is delayed (for example due to operations relating to end of day calculations, or in case of technical issues with our settlement system)

In such a case, you can query for your trade status using our FX Held Rate status endpoint as below:

HTTP GET /api/v2/fx/held-rates/status?clientOrderId=YourUniqueReference