UK banking giant Barclays has announced today the launch of non-deliverable forwards (NDF) algorithms on the BARX electronic Trading Platform , thus increasing its FX trading offering.
BARX Gator, to which the new NDFs are being added, is the bank’s cross-asset electronic order execution channel that combines Liquidity available on external venues with BARX principal liquidity. The platform offers trading services with equities, fixed income instruments, futures, and FX.
The channel has added 1-month NDFs for multiple algorithms for seven Asian currency pairs - USD/CNY, USD/IDR, USD/INR, USD/KRW, USD/MYR, USD/PHP, and USD/TWD.
Hence, the bank detailed that the new product has been added in response to the increasing Asian client demand to trade NDFs similar to deliverable currencies.
“The launch of our NDF algorithms puts Barclays at the forefront of a significant evolution in FX algos and we’re pleased to offer this innovative product to our clients,” Naseer Al-Khudairi, global head of markets electronic trading and digital strategy at Barclays, said.
“This is an exciting addition to the BARX platform as we continue to make significant investments to our electronic offering to provide clients with the solutions they need.”
The bank also pointed out that the electronification of the NDF inter-bank market has provided the ideal infrastructure for launching NDF algorithms, resulting in improving liquidity.
Booming Business with Pandemic Volatility
Barclays added the NDFs after it reported £4,564 million income from its Markets business in the first half of this year, a year-on-year jump of 62.65 percent. The FICC income of the bank also jumped by 83 percent in H1 2020.
Meanwhile, 24 Exchange, the OTC platform of Fastmatch founder Dmitri Galinov, recently revealed that its ADV for FX NDFs touched $100 million.
