Bank of Canada Issues 2025 Triennial FX and Derivatives Survey

The Bank of Canada issued the Canadian component of the 2025 Triennial Central Bank Survey, covering foreign exchange and over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market activity during April 2025. The release marks Canada's input into the three-year cross-border exercise coordinated across major central banks.

What does the survey measure?

The Triennial Central Bank Survey is the global benchmark for notional turnover (total face value of contracts traded) in FX spot, FX forwards, and FX swaps (a spot leg paired with an offsetting forward leg). The April 2025 reference month captures dealer-to-client and inter-dealer segments, broken out by currency pair, instrument and counterparty type.

The survey also covers single-currency interest rate derivatives (IRDs), equity-linked derivatives, credit derivatives and commodity derivatives. Desks receive separate turnover figures for spot, outright forwards, swaps, and options across G10 (the ten most-traded currencies) and emerging-market currency pairs.

For Canadian desks, the survey delivers the only central-bank-sourced read on Canadian dollar (CAD) turnover against major and emerging-market crosses. It also measures activity booked at Canadian financial centers regardless of the underlying currency, producing a clean view of domestic liquidity provision.

What does this change for execution?

Buy-side (institutional asset managers and pension funds) and sell-side (broker-dealers making markets and executing orders) desks use triennial turnover data to benchmark execution costs against reported market volumes. Revisions to reported CAD volumes feed into how desks route orders between RFQ (request for quote, where a trader asks multiple dealers to bid) platforms and FX ECNs (electronic communications networks, automated venues that match orders).

Liquidity fragmentation analysis depends on accurate turnover baselines. Counterparty risk (the chance the other side of a trade defaults) calculations, margining methodology reviews and clearing eligibility assessments also rely on the aggregate notional figures the triennial exercise produces.

Bank treasuries and corporate hedgers draw on the same series to size hedging programs and document derivative notional exposure to auditors. Transaction-cost-analysis (TCA) models reference the triennial turnover series when normalizing execution quality across asset managers.

A shift in reported CAD swap volume between surveys can reset the baseline that pension consultants use when grading manager performance. That indirect use of the data is what pushes compliance and risk teams to log every survey revision.

What should desks track in the release?

The April 2025 reference period offers the first triennial snapshot of post-2022 market structure for Canadian-booked activity. Desks should examine any revisions to historical CAD turnover series alongside the new figures, since the BIS (Bank for International Settlements, the Basel-based institution that coordinates the survey) often retroactively adjusts prior-year data when publishing aggregates.

A second watch-item is the cross-border split. The triennial measures activity by booking location, not counterparty nationality. A Canadian dealer booking a USD/CAD trade for a foreign client counts toward Canadian turnover, not the client's home jurisdiction.

The survey also distinguishes trades settled through CLS (Continuous Linked Settlement, the multicurrency settlement system) from those settled bilaterally. That split matters for prime-broker (a dealer that provides financing and clearing services) and CCP (central counterparty, a clearinghouse that intermediates trades) exposure analysis.

When does the full detail land?

The Bank of Canada release feeds into the BIS aggregate, with country-level breakdowns published in the months that follow. Canadian desks should expect full turnover tables to appear alongside BIS FX and IRD aggregates, with historical revisions rolled into the same release window.

Trading desks can pull the historical series from the Bank of Canada website and the BIS triennial data portal to rebuild their execution-cost benchmarks. Cross-checking the new Canadian figures against the prior 2022 release will surface any methodological changes introduced since the last survey.

The April 2025 reference date will anchor liquidity assumptions for the next two execution-cost review cycles, until the 2028 survey supersedes it.