Global Trading spoke to Jonathan Hirsch, Head of Institutional FX, MM and Crypto Sales, at Swissquote Bank SA.
Can you please tell us briefly about your company and its offerings?
Swissquote Bank is a leading Swiss financial institution renowned for its robust digital trading platforms and innovative approach to financial services. On the institutional side, we offer a comprehensive suite of solutions across Foreign Exchange (FX), Crypto trading and custody, and Global Custody.
What truly differentiates us is our ability to help institutional and global custody clients optimise their treasury and trading costs across all asset classes. By combining advanced execution technology, smart liquidity access, and a deep understanding of institutional needs, we’ve become a trusted partner for banks, brokers, corporates, and family offices worldwide.
What has been your growth trajectory over the last decade?
Over the past decade, we’ve strategically shifted our focus to significantly grow our institutional business, expanding our footprint in FX and digital assets while enhancing our Global Custody offering. We were among the first banks to offer crypto services, and we’ve approached the asset class from an institutional-grade perspective since day one. Our growth has been fuelled by continuous innovation, client-centric development, and a commitment to cost-efficient, high-performance infrastructure.
How did Swissquote Bank perform in 2024, and what factors drove growth?
2024 was another strong year of growth for Swissquote Bank. The combination of elevated interest rates, market volatility, and renewed momentum in the crypto space served as key tailwinds.
On the institutional side, we saw increasing demand from clients looking to optimise their execution, diversify their trading venues, and consolidate custody and trading through a single, efficient provider. Our tailored solutions in FX, Crypto, and Custody have positioned us well to meet these needs.
How have the FX markets changed over the past year in light of regulation in Europe and current geopolitical events?
The European regulatory landscape has continued to evolve, increasing the focus on transparency, best execution, and operational resilience. Combined with rising geopolitical tensions, this has led many institutional clients to reassess their counterparties and seek more reliable, regulated, and diversified partners.
Swissquote’s strong regulatory framework, multi-asset class capabilities, and hybrid market-making model have enabled us to thrive in this new environment and provide our clients with secure and competitive access to global FX markets.
How is crypto playing into your strategy, and how do you expect your engagement with the asset class to develop this year?
Swissquote has been a pioneer in regulated crypto trading and custody since 2017. Today, we are scaling this offering to meet institutional standards by developing new features, enhancing security, and expanding connectivity to third-party platforms and custodians.
We see growing demand from institutional and global custody clients for integrated crypto solutions – not only for trading but also for secure, segregated custody with full regulatory compliance. In 2025, we plan to further broaden our crypto product range to support this evolution.
How have you used technology and innovation to improve your execution and service?
By focusing on institutional growth, we’ve invested heavily in execution quality, price competitiveness, and connectivity. We’ve extended our reach to more institutional venues and enhanced our proprietary pricing engines.
In parallel, we’ve optimised our Multi-Currency Corporate Accounts, which now support more dynamic and integrated treasury management. This enables us to provide seamless cross-asset execution for clients who manage portfolios across FX, crypto, and traditional instruments.
How are you building and managing sustainable relationships with a pool of liquidity providers (LPs)?
We operate a hybrid market-making model that balances internalisation and external liquidity access. Our LP network is built for quality and consistency rather than sheer quantity. In 2025, we’re set to launch our STIR (Short-Term Interest Rate) Book on the institutional side, complementing our existing Spot BBook pricing.
This new capability will significantly expand our liquidity distribution and enhance our risk management, positioning us to serve more sophisticated clients while maintaining deep, sustainable relationships with our LPs.
What does your retail expertise bring to the institutional marketplace?
Swissquote’s strong foundation in the retail market provides a unique advantage: we understand flow behaviour, pricing optimisation, and the power of aggregation. By effectively managing our internal retail flow, we’re able to offer enhanced pricing to institutional clients.
This synergy has led to a 50% increase in our institutional daily volume, driven by smart internalisation strategies and a more compelling liquidity proposition for our professional clients.
What are the biggest challenges when it comes to managing multiple liquidity flows?
While not applicable in this context, we continuously monitor and optimise our internal and external flows to ensure efficient pricing, risk distribution, and transparency, all while maintaining the highest level of service and performance for our clients.
What are your plans for 2025 and beyond, and where do you see future growth?
2025 will mark a new phase of growth for Swissquote’s institutional services. A key milestone will be the go-live of our STIR Book, which will allow us to take and manage risk on Swaps and Forwards, enhancing our offering in the short-term rates space.
We aim to be a sticky partner – one that clients rely on not just for pricing, but for insight, flexibility, and long-term collaboration. Our focus will remain on expanding within banks, family offices, global custodians, and corporates, helping them optimise cost, performance, and operational efficiency across asset classes.
