Barclays enhances institutional FX trading platform
BARX enables clients to optimize execution performance by accessing deep pools of liquidity across equities, fixed income, futures and FX.

Barclays has rolled out new products and features for its institutional FX trading platform, BARX FX.
The enhanced solution now leverages BARX Book, which is part of BARX Gator, to gives clients access to unique principal liquidity streams, as well as an increased number of external liquidity providers.
Gator Adapt was also introduced to address institutional algo needs. This one in particular 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 which is intended to minimize market impact for a given level of risk.
BARX Direct, the third new feature, is the platform’s improved low latency solution which uses innovative pricing models, predictive analytics, and an optimized co-location strategy.
“We continue to execute our ambitious expansion efforts in electronic trading to enhance our global offering and bring our clients world-class efficiencies”, said Naseer Al-Khudairi, Global Head of Markets Electronic Trading and Digital Strategy at Barclays.
“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.”
BARX enables clients to optimize execution performance by accessing deep pools of liquidity across equities, fixed income, futures and FX.
In 2020, Barclays launched new non-deliverable forwards (NDF) algorithms on the BARX electronic trading platform, including 1-month NDFs for multiple algorithms in seven Asian currency pairs; USD/CNY, USD/IDR, USD/INR, USD/KRW, USD/MYR, USD/PHP, and USD/TWD.
The launch aimed to address strong client demand, particularly in Asia, to trade NDFs in the same way as deliverable currencies. The electronification of the NDF inter-bank market has created an ideal environment to launch NDF algorithms and improve liquidity.
In December 2020, Britain’s last remaining investment banking business has launched a new equity trading platform in collaboration with the US Nasdaq exchange.
The new single dealer platform is called BARX Book For Equities and will be hosted by Nasdaq. BARX Book will provide the banks, institutional clients, with access to Barclays principal liquidity, in US single name stocks and ETFs.
Barclays is one of the world’s most prominent proponents of the last look execution procedure. Its BARX platform provides FX liquidity by streaming indicative prices on an in house and third party platform basis.
The practice of executing trades via ‘last look’ methodology has been the subject of regulatory discourse over recent times, however Barclays’ institutional BARX platform continues to offer a last look execution facility.