Singapore - Chinese yuan futures were launched on the Singapore Exchange on Monday with some $229.4 million worth of trades done.

There are two yuan futures that investors can trade on the SGX - US dollar/offshore yuan and yuan/US dollar futures.

Transactions in the new futures achieved a first day volume of 1,846 contracts or approximately 1.1 billion yuan in notional value (S$229.4 million).

Trading was robust with active participation from a diverse pool of counterparties, the SGX said in a statement.

"Market makers and key participants for the contracts include Bank of China Singapore branch, DBS Bank, ICBC Singapore branch, Quantrun Investment Management and Virtu Financial," it said.

"In support of the product launch, more than 1 billion yuan of cash has been deposited with SGX as margin collateral by market participants."

This is in response to SGX's initiative to add yuan cash collateral to its list of acceptable margin collateral.

Singapore is Asia's largest foreign market, and the largest offshore yuan clearing centre outside of Greater China.

SGX's suite of Asian foreign exchange futures has registered more than US$10 billion in aggregate notional value traded over the past 12 months.