Deliverable Forwards: Get Started
A deliverable forward lets your customer agree a rate today and get the actual currency weeks later. You build it from two legs and sell it as one product. You carry no FX risk and commit none of your own capital.
What am I selling?
A deliverable forward, built from two legs: CRX's locked-rate leg and your own spot conversion.
Your customer agrees a price today and settles later. In between, the rate moves. Today the only tool you can hand them is a wider spread, a padded guess at the move. The instrument that removes the guess is the non-deliverable forward (NDF): a contract that locks the rate and cash-settles the difference at maturity. See Non-Deliverable Forward (~3 min).
CRX supplies that locked-rate leg. You add your spot conversion, the actual buying and delivering of the currency. The customer sees one thing: a deliverable forward. A locked rate, and the real currency in hand at maturity.
How does a trade run?
Five steps, and none of them is yours to fund.
- The customer asks. They enter notional, pair, and maturity in your app.
- The customer funds the margin into your wallet. It becomes yours to use, returned at maturity once they pay, or applied to the hedge if they do not.
- You lock the rate with CRX. Request the matching NDF; CRX returns one firm rate.
- You quote the customer that rate plus your markup, and hedge the moment they accept. Their collateral becomes your margin on the CRX trade.
- You stay margined. As the rate moves, CRX margins you and you margin the customer to match. A call fires only at a breach.
The customer's money funds the hedge. You add a rate and a wrapper, not capital.
What happens at maturity?
One fork, and you keep your markup down both paths.
- The customer pays. You buy the currency at that day's spot and deliver it. The NDF settles the rate difference, so your locked rate holds. You keep your markup.
- The customer does not pay. Their collateral covers the hedge close-out at no loss to you. You keep your markup.
Your cost is locked against any move in the rate, and the customer's own collateral covers you if they fail.
What do I put in, and what do I risk?
No FX risk, and none of your own capital. The customer's margin funds the hedge.
- No FX risk. CRX's NDF moves opposite your spot leg. Whatever the rate does, the two legs net to your locked rate.
- No capital of your own. The customer posts the margin first. That collateral becomes your margin on the CRX trade.
- No new paperwork. You offer it to existing customers, no extra onboarding for them.
What you put in is a rate and a markup. What you keep is the markup, down both maturity paths above.
NotePartner-facing. Not legal advice. Confirm with counsel. The hedge leg runs on Base Sepolia, chain84532.
Why an NDF, not an option or ordinary forward?
Three instruments lock a forward rate. Only the NDF locks it with no premium and no onshore access.
| Hedge | What you pay | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverable forward | no premium, but the full notional is funded and onshore access is required | restricted or illiquid for most emerging-market currencies |
| FX option / collar | a volatility premium, up front | flexibility you do not need when you only want a locked rate |
| NDF | no premium, no delivery, cash-settled | settles the rate difference; you add the spot leg separately |
Two different premiums hide in the word premium.
The first is the forward premium: the gap between today's spot and the locked rate. It is set by the interest-rate differential between the two currencies, and every forward carries it, NDF included. It is the fair price of time, not waste (BIS Quarterly Review, Dec 2025).
The second is the volatility premium: what an option charges on top, for the right to walk away if the rate moves your way. Your customer does not want that right. They want one rate, fixed. So the volatility premium is money paid for a feature they will never use.
The ordinary deliverable forward escapes the volatility premium but asks for two other things: the full notional funded up front, and onshore access to the currency. For most emerging-market currencies that access is restricted or the market is too thin to use.
Therefore: the NDF is the only clean fit. It locks the rate, charges no volatility premium, funds no full notional, and needs no onshore access. It settles in cash at maturity, against a reference fixing.
NoteCaveat. For a freely convertible currency, a deliverable forward prices close to the NDF. The NDF's edge is largest in restricted and emerging-market currencies, where CRX operates.
What does CRX add over a bank's NDF?
The same instrument, without the bank's capital rent.
A bank NDF charges three lines: a headline spread of 50 to 300+ bps, a carry, and a capital charge of 20 to 100+ bps: the rent on the balance sheet that backs the trade. CRX keeps the carry (it is the same fixing, a tie) and replaces the rent with light margin you post yourself, which can sit in a yield-bearing asset and earn while it secures the trade.
What you get is settlement-grade infrastructure under your product:
- Segregated collateral. Customer funds and margin held apart, not on a balance sheet.
- On-chain enforcement. The locked rate, the daily margin, and the close-out run as code, not as a counterparty's promise.
- A reference price. The fixing both sides settle against, the same one used to mark the trade each day.
You face the customer. CRX is your counterparty on the hedge underneath. You add a rate and a wrapper; CRX carries the rest.
For the offshore NDF market this whole product sits on, see BIS / NY Fed, Lipscomb, An Overview of Non-Deliverable Foreign Exchange Forward Markets and IMF WP/20/179, Offshore Currency Markets: NDFs in Asia.