Market-making
What the bank really pays to lay your risk off — conceded at the size you actually traded.
FX & Treasury
Every transaction benchmarked to the real interbank rate. A flat monthly fee — never a share of your flow.
Eight trades. One page. 48 hours. No fee.
The problem
You get one number on the confirmation. It is the interbank mid plus a margin the bank chose, and nothing on the paperwork separates the two.
There is no line item, so there is nothing to put out to tender.
It sits in cost of goods, in no budget, so it never reaches a cost review.
FX Global Code, Principle 14: a mark-up should be "fair and reasonable." It is voluntary.
Why me
Bank of America corporate FX and derivatives, Middle Market derivatives at Safra, FX options at XP. I am not guessing at how these prices get set — I set them.
The method
Six components, each priced, each showing its derivation. To argue with the number, the bank has to argue against its own cost structure.
What it genuinely pays
What it may earn on it
What the bank really pays to lay your risk off — conceded at the size you actually traded.
Your bank's favourite defence — "small tickets cost more" — granted, priced, and exhausted.
Real on a forward. Zero on spot, which settles in two days. Collapses if you post margin. Priced differently in each case, because they are different.
Disappears the day you post margin. On its own line so you can ask about it.
A return on the capital held against your trade. Conceded, at a published ratio and a stated hurdle.
And a fair margin on top of all of it. What is left after that is not a cost — it is the number the meeting is about.
Illustrative figures for one USD 250,000 six-month USD/BRL forward. Your report runs on your trades.
How it works
Documents you already receive. Email is fine, redacted is fine.
Against the central bank's intraday rates for that day, not the daily close.
Per trade, per bank, in basis points and in dollars, with the ledger behind it.
You get the evidence and a plan for what to do with it.
No ERP access, no credentials, nothing installed. Same bank, same portal, same relationship manager — and I never contact your bank.
Why you can trust the number
A contract carries a trade date, not an execution time. On an ordinary day in July, USD/BRL travelled 19.2 basis points between the first published rate and the last — wider than the fee anyone claims to measure off it.
So a trade with a timestamp is measured. One without is a bounded range, and the headline is the floor. Where it is too close to call, I claim nothing — which is why the number survives your bank.
19.2 basis points of travel, one ordinary day
Banco Central do Brasil, published intraday bulletins — the rate your own exchange contracts cite.
And it stays found
The audit happens once. The subscription is why it stays found: every new trade priced the same way, and an alert the month a bank drifts back outside the band.
Pricing
I am the only party in the room who is not paid on your trade. That is the product.
00
Free · 48 hours
Eight trades, one page. Whether there is a number worth chasing.
01
Monthly · cancel anytime
The live mid and the fair two-way price. Self-serve, no documents.
02
Flat monthly, by FX volume
The product. Twelve months audited, then monitored, with a quarterly review.
03
By application
A written policy and hedge-ratio bands your board can ratify. Only after an audit.
If the audit does not find at least twice the fee, you are out in 90 days and I refund the balance. Quoted after the teardown — ask and I will tell you.
FAQ
Never. No execution, no account access, no ability to move or instruct funds. It is a measurement.
No. Same bank, same portal, same relationship manager. There is nothing to switch off.
Data terms are signed first and your counsel can redline them. There is no portal and no shared database, and a spreadsheet export never leaves my machine.
Eight recent conversions, one currency pair — whatever is already in a folder. Redacted is fine. You get one page within 48 hours, free.
Or write directly: alex@aammgroup.com
Four teardowns a month, one per company.