Barclays boosts BARX’s e-trading offering with new FX products

By Megha Bhattacharya

Barclays has announced the launch of a new suite of products for BARX FX in a bid to boost its electronic capabilities and strengthen its FX offerings for clients. Barclays stated that corporate and institutional clients can now leverage BARX Book for FX, Barclays’ principal liquidity solution that forms an important part of BARX Gator. The enhanced solution now gives clients access to unique principal liquidity streams, as well as an increased number of external liquidity providers.

Naseer Al-Khudairi, Global Head of Markets Electronic Trading and Digital Strategy at Barclays said, “We continue to execute our ambitious expansion efforts in electronic trading to enhance our global offering and bring our clients world-class efficiencies. These new BARX FX developments are the latest in a stream of enhancements to our BARX platform and we look forward to harnessing the momentum in our business as we continue to invest across all of our e-trading solutions.”

Clients can also access Gator Adapt, Barclays’ new implementation shortfall algorithm available within the BARX Gator suite of algorithms. This new algorithm allows clients to manage the trade-off between arrival price slippage and execution price risk and clients have the flexibility to choose an execution-style that is intended to minimize the market impact for a given level of risk. The company has also launched BARX Direct, the platform’s improved low latency solution which uses innovative pricing models, predictive analytics, and an optimized co-location strategy.

Recently, Barclays announced a partnership with UK-based online pension provider, Smart Pension. The bank will now be able to introduce its business banking clients to Smart Pension via the Barclays website. Smart Pension offers an online portal for both the employer and employee so that individuals can easily manage their participation in the scheme. The portal can be integrated with other administrative programmes such as payroll, admin, reporting and compliance capabilities.