Goldman Sachs has joined a founder group of seven banks supporting the CLS and Traiana, an ICAP company, joint venture for global foreign exchange markets.

The other member banks of the joint venture include Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland. The joint venture provides trade aggregation services to participants active in the over the counter (OTC) foreign exchange market.

The venture was initially announced in April this year between CLS Group, the global industry standard for foreign exchange settlement services, and ICAP, a leading interdealer broker.

The initiative is aimed at addressing the rapid increase in OTC foreign exchange volumes by traders including hedge funds, algorithmic traders and retail and institutional participants. The joint venture will enable a reduction in operational risk, reduce post trade costs and rationalise and consolidate legacy post-trade processes throughout the global foreign exchange markets.

Traiana is providing the technology infrastructure to the venture. This will be rolled out to participating companies following regulatory approval.