Wild swings in exchange rates that forced corporate treasurers to urgently review their FX exposures and rebalance lots of hedges if necessary.

Now banks like Citi and NatWest Markets are developing a new breed of automated hedging tools that they say will do their job on the fly with little or no human intervention.

The selling point is simple: clients can plug their risk management systems into the bank’s own trading platform, set the rules of engagement and hey presto