Bloomberg earns recognition at Central Banking Awards for backing Nigerian FX reforms

Global financial data and analytics provider Bloomberg has been credited at the Central Banking Awards 2026 for efforts in supporting foreign exchange market reforms in Nigeria through provision of financial market infrastructure.

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The company got recognition in the Financial Markets Infrastructure Services – Wholesale category for helping the Central Bank of Nigeria deploy BMatch system (an automated solution and order book used for matching FX trades), according to a statement by Bloomberg on Tuesday.

BMatch is designed to improve efficiency, transparency and price discovery in the FX market in the course of interbank foreign exchange transactions.

“The platform has helped to increase transparency, liquidity and resilience in the Nigerian market, aligning the country’s FX market with global best practices,” Bloomberg said.

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Andrew Beacham, the global head of Emerging Markets Trading Product at Bloomberg, stated: “It’s been a lot of work to get this far – implementation of switch auctions requires close co-ordination between auctioneer and primary dealers to make sure they understand the new functionality – but our clients really appreciated the efficiency and cost savings this brings.”

“It has been very exciting for us to see this,” he added.

The Central Bank of Nigeria had last month been named as the global central bank of the year 2026 by the Central Banking Awards for its raft of far-reaching reforms aimed at restoring stability and confidence to the economy after the country return to orthodox monetary policy in 2023.

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The tough but investor-friendly reforms liberalised foreign exchange trading by unifying exchange rates across various FX windows, sharply devalued the naira to attract foreign capital, and implemented new rules in the FX market to enhance transparency and boost foreign reserves.

One of the biggest wins so far is the surge in the country’s net foreign-exchange reserves, which accelerated to $34.8 billion at the end of last year from $4 billion two years prior, marking a 772.2 per cent increase.

As of March, Nigeria and Sri Lanka were the most recent countries to adopt BMatch for interbank trading in the domestic spot FX market. Deploying the solution in Nigeria involved more than 30 banks in all.