The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX) is targeting geographical growth and a diversified membership base, while avoiding look-alike products.

“I want the DGCX to grow geographically and I partly measure our success in the new members and new clients we bring to the exchange,” Les Male, chief executive officer at DGCX, told FOW.

Male, who replaced Gaurang Desai as CEO in February, said he would now like to see further diversification of the membership base at DGCX.

“For example, bringing in additional clients from Asia and Europe,” he said.

“We have one eye on China. We are looking to see how we can deepen and strengthen our good relationships with Chinese regulators and exchanges,” he added.

This comes after a strong start to the year in which a number of initiatives aimed at deepening the existing product portfolio, and introducing value added services, contributed to a significant increase in derivatives volumes – up 44% to 11.4 million contracts according to the Futures Industry Association’s half year report.

Among these initiatives, the DGCX launched the region’s first physically-backed Sharia-compliant gold contract on March 29, marking the exchange’s entry into the Islamic finance sector.

“The Shari’ah-compliant gold contract is strategic for the exchange, we do not want to focus on look-alike products,” Male said.

“We want to continue to be innovative while also delivering what our members and participants want.”

Earlier this year, Male explained that there is “huge potential” for adding new products and developing the continued participation within the local Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region after upgrading the exchange's trading and clearing technology to Cinnober’s TRADEexpress platform.

He also said one of the group’s key priorities for 2018 will be bridging the gap between Islamic and conventional finance markets.