Berenberg Asset Management announced its adoption of BestX, the FX analytics software provider, for transparency and to evidence best execution to their clients. Berenberg is a quantitative active currency manager with some €11 billion ($12.8bn) in AuM.
Matthias Grimm, head of Overlay at Berenberg, said in a statement that the importance of indirect execution costs is often underestimated by investors using an outsourced currency manager, but it can have a significant impact on the performance of a currency hedging strategy. That’s why the firm has established a specialized team for execution that is separate from portfolio management, he added. Within this trading setup, BestX will provide analysis and pre- and post-trade tools.
Since 2016 when it was founded, BestX has gained significant market share with asset managers because of increased transparency demands in FX markets following a series of fixing scandals and regulatory scrutiny. “The AUM of our buy-side clients is through $17 trillion, and we are starting to see adoption increase across Germany and more broadly in Europe,” said BestX co-founder Oliver Jerome.
BestX is also making headway with the sell-side: Societe Generale picked the vendor to provide independent pre- and post-trade TCA alongside the bank’s internal tools.