Innovation, partnership and growth in Asia

Over the past 15 years, Asia has evolved from a new market for Eurex into a key pillar of its global business. Over that period, Eurex's relationship with the region has expanded significantly, encompassing regional products, clearing, technology and an increasingly diverse client base. 

As Eurex marks 15 years in Singapore, Robbert Booij, CEO of Eurex, and Jens Quiram, Head of Global Sales and Marketing at Eurex, reflect on that evolution, how the needs of clients across the region have changed and what will define Eurex's next chapter in Asia. 

Today, clients are looking beyond execution costs to the broader economics of a transaction. By taking a portfolio-based approach across fixed income, credit, FX and repo, firms can unlock meaningful margin, funding and capital efficiencies.

Jens Quiram

Head of Global Sales and Marketing at Eurex

Innovation is essential, but never at the expense of resilience. The strength of our client partnerships and the continuity of our team in Asia have been key to building Eurex into a leading global marketplace.

Robbert Booij

CEO of Eurex

Over the past 15 years, Asia has evolved into a key pillar of Eurex's global business. How has the region's role changed in Eurex strategy and where do you see the greatest opportunities from here?

Robbert Booij: Asia has been instrumental in positioning Eurex as a leading global exchange and clearing house. Approximately 15 percent of our business now comes from the region, with growth across both fixed income and equity. 

What makes Asia particularly interesting is how globally orientated its investors are. Clients use Eurex to manage European fixed income exposure, but also global equity index exposure through benchmarks from STOXX, MSCI and FTSE. We have also seen particularly strong recent growth from the buy-side and that remains a significant opportunity. 

Jens Quiram: What has also changed is the nature of what we offer. When we first came to Asia, our focus was primarily on giving clients access to European products and liquidity pools. 

Today, we are increasingly a regional player as well as a global one, with products that are specifically relevant to Asian clients, including MSCI products covering Korea, Japan and China. A regional product can be the starting point of a relationship, before we introduce the broader Eurex offering across trading and clearing. 

But getting to this point has also been a learning process for us. When we first came to Asia, we did not have the same regional DNA and on-the-ground understanding that we have today. We have developed that over the past 15 years by working closely with clients, associations, regulators and other market participants across the region. 

Those relationships now allow us to develop products together with the market in response to specific regional demand, rather than simply taking what has worked in Europe and bringing it to Asia. That is an important evolution in our role here.

How has the growing sophistication of the Asian buy-side changed what is expected from Eurex?

Jens Quiram: Historically, conversations with these firms were very focused on trading and price. Today, clients increasingly consider the entire cost of a transaction, including funding, capital, margin and the efficiencies that can be achieved by bringing different products together. 

Our conversations have therefore become much more holistic, spanning trading, technology, risk management and clearing. Portfolio-based approaches are particularly important. Bringing together exposures across OTC and exchange-traded fixed income, credit and FX, as well as repo, can reduce margin and funding requirements significantly and, for banks, potentially reduce capital costs. 

Robbert Booij: That shift is something we see clearly across the region. It is why we are constantly looking at ways for clients to consolidate more business within one clearing house and cover more exposure with the same amount of collateral.

With technology becoming an increasingly important part of these conversations, how are clients in Asia influencing Eurex's approach to digital transformation? 

Robbert Booij: DLT and digital transformation are prominent topics in our conversations with clients in Asia. Our ambition is for Eurex Clearing to provide the digital rails between traditional and new financial market infrastructure. 

There is a practical dimension to this in Asia. Time zone differences can create challenges around payments, margin calls and moving collateral when traditional infrastructure is closed. DLT has the potential to address some of those challenges. 

Cloud connectivity is another example. We have introduced a cloud access point partly in response to demand from clients in Asia, providing cloud-native firms with another route into our markets. 

Jens Quiram: Asia has always been a melting pot of innovation and new technology and that is becoming increasingly relevant as our business becomes more digital through developments such as DLT, tokenization and AI. 

For us, it is important to listen to innovators in the region and understand how these technologies can help bridge traditional and digital finance. As technology and collateral mobilization increasingly move towards around-the-clock availability, some of the boundaries created by different time zones and market cut-offs could also become less relevant. 

That has implications well beyond Asia. Embracing innovation can help us create a truly global infrastructure in which traditional and digital finance increasingly operate alongside one another. 

Another area where boundaries are becoming less distinct is between listed and OTC markets. What is driving this convergence?

Jens Quiram: Fundamentally, it comes back to efficiency. If you have uncleared products with high capital requirements that necessitate posting bilateral margin to numerous counterparties, then there is a clear argument for bringing those exposures together at a CCP. 

That is why we continue to see the futurization of markets. Total return futures and credit index futures take exposures traditionally managed through OTC products and provide them through listed instruments. 

But that does not mean everything will move onto an order book. There are markets where execution continues to take place OTC and is likely to remain there. In those cases, we are building hybrid models and bridges between the two markets. EFP solutions, block trading solutions and Eurex EnLight are all tools that allow clients to retain flexibility in execution while accessing the benefits of a listed and cleared environment.  

Robbert Booij: We have seen strong uptake of products such as total return futures in Asia. Cross-margining is also a high priority for many of our clients, with the significant cost savings that it can generate. We are looking more and more at how we can extend those benefits further across repo, swaps and futures.

How fundamental have regional partnerships been to Eurex's growth in Asia?

Jens Quiram: They have been the foundation of our success. Different countries have different regulations, market structures and client requirements, which is why regional expertise and external partnerships are so important. 

Partnership is also fundamental to how we develop our products and services. We need to understand what clients in individual markets actually require and work alongside local participants to develop the right solutions. 

At the same time, it is important that we maintain the same standards globally across our products and regions. Many of our clients operate internationally, so that consistency provides certainty and creates operational efficiencies. The aim is to combine local market understanding with the benefits of a global infrastructure. 

Robbert Booij: And that is why the 15-year milestone matters. We did not open an office in Asia because we saw a short-term commercial opportunity. We were here for the long term. 

Today, we have teams covering Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Sydney, with product, account management and risk expertise in the region. For me, the people and relationships we have built have been among the most important factors in our success. 

We have also worked with partners to remove barrier to access through sponsored access models, regulatory changes and new forms of connectivity. Many of our flagship fixed income and equity index products are now available for trading 21 hours a day, helping clients in Asia manage exposures outside the traditional European trading day.

If the first 15 years were about establishing Eurex's presence in Asia, what will define the next chapter?

Robbert Booij: We will continue to make it easier for clients to access Eurex while ensuring that the products we develop respond to genuine market demand. 

Our model is built on identifying opportunities at the local level. In this case, we recognized a gap in the Asian market and leveraged our regional product expertise alongside our development capabilities in Europe to deliver a targeted solution. 

Rather than taking a Europe-first approach, we develop products based on demand from the markets we serve. 

Retail is another opportunity. Asia has a very active retail community, and we see potential to work with more regional brokers to provide access to European equity products, including single-stock options, futures and micro contracts. 

Jens Quiram: I also believe the next phase will entail combining global infrastructure and liquidity with products and solutions that reflect regional demand. Over the past 15 years, we have moved from primarily bringing European products into Asia to developing a much deeper understanding of individual markets across the region.  

The next step is to build on that by continuing to listen to clients locally, identifying where new opportunities are emerging and understanding how those requirements fit within the broader Eurex ecosystem. 

As markets become increasingly digital, the distinction between global and regional infrastructure may also become less pronounced. But regional expertise will remain essential because the products and solutions we develop still have to respond to the needs of the clients using them. 

Finally, as AI and digitalization reshape financial markets, how do you see Eurex evolving alongside its clients?

Robbert Booij: AI will change the way we do business. In risk management, for example, it can help us calculate risks more effectively and better estimate settlement performance. It can also support product development, while clients are already using AI to identify trading opportunities more quickly. 

But innovation cannot come at the expense of resilience. Safety, operational resilience, and efficiency will always remain fundamental. 

Ultimately, though, it comes back to people and relationships. The continuity of our team in Asia and the strong partnerships we have built over the last 15 years have played a key role in changing perceptions of Eurex, from being seen as a European exchange to being recognized as a truly global marketplace. 

15 years is an important milestone, but it is also the beginning of the next long-term chapter for us in Asia.