The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has revealed that Best Execution practices must be provided by capital markets intermediaries to their customers.
Best Execution legally requires financial services companies to provide the best available terms of order execution for their clients, with a goal of bringing transparency of execution and a higher level of discourse in transactions.
The Best Execution rules are in line with the European regulatory requirements under the MiFID II around best execution that came into effect at the beginning of 2018. Companies were then giving an 18-month window to develop policies and procedures to offering the best execution.
Not all market participants will be slapped with these new rules. If the customers of a CMI are institutional investors or if the non-retail investor does not rely on the CMI to achieve Best Execution, then they can receive an exemption from the rules.
MAS noted that CMIs can determine the factors by which they achieve Best Execution, include the characteristics of the execution, settlement and customer order.
