Bank SinoPac expands exotics trading

Henry Chang, SinoPac's treasury manager in Taipei, told RiskNews’ sister publication, FX Week, that the bank aims to recruit an unspecified number of traders from outside the bank, as well as training existing bank staff in exotic options trading over the next few months.

SinoPac began trading exotic options on June 7. So far, an unnamed member of the existing options team has been the sole trader in this area. The bank trades standard exotic options such as one-touch and digital options in the Group of Three currency pairs: dollar/yen, euro/yen and euro/dollar.

The trader, who is also responsible for trading vanilla options, reports to Chang.

Chang said trading has been going "quite well" and that he expects to see increased volumes. Taiwanese interbank clients and Taiwanese corporates are largely driving the demand, he said.

In particular, electronics, IT, telecommunications and import/export companies have been particularly interested in using exotic currency options, he added. Bank SinoPac recently started using the SD-FX options pricing system from technology vendor Super Derivatives to price exotic options.

Bank SinoPac, established in 1992, now has offices around Taiwan and in Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Vietnam.