Barclays Margin FX

[Purple Brain]

The advertising banner for Barclays Margin FX has been displaying I think since I joined the site which was a few weeks ago. I thought I'd have a look at the platform and spreads and so forth to get an idea of their offering. I signed up and as part of the registration process for a demo account, they obviously want to get as much personal data as possible. No problem with any of that. What I do have a problem with though is being getting a call literally within 20 minutes of registering from Barclays Margin FX, but from a number which I already had programmed in my phone from ages back for a bunch called ODL who are absolute nuisances for hard sell sales pitch calls on an annoyingly frequent basis.

Is Barclays Margin FX part of ODL or the other way round? Either way and regardless of the relationship, it's enough for me to put off dealing with Barclays Margin FX.

 

[The Artist]

The advertising banner for Barclays Margin FX has been displaying I think since I joined the site which was a few weeks ago. I thought I'd have a look at the platform and spreads and so forth to get an idea of their offering. I signed up and as part of the registration process for a demo account, they obviously want to get as much personal data as possible. No problem with any of that. What I do have a problem with though is being getting a call literally within 20 minutes of registering from Barclays Margin FX, but from a number which I already had programmed in my phone from ages back for a bunch called ODL who are absolute nuisances for hard sell sales pitch calls on an annoyingly frequent basis.

Is Barclays Margin FX part of ODL or the other way round? Either way and regardless of the relationship, it's enough for me to put off dealing with Barclays Margin FX.

ODL is FXCM, and Barclays Margin FX is the retail FX arm of Barclays which uses FXCM technology.

 

[Purple Brain]

Thanks for the information The Artist. Presumably Barclays are aware ODL are using personal data from clients applying to Barclays for their own marketing purposes, which seems strange as superficially, they would appear to be competitors in the retail FX market space.

 

[The Artist]

Thanks for the information The Artist. Presumably Barclays are aware ODL are using personal data from clients applying to Barclays for their own marketing purposes, which seems strange as superficially, they would appear to be competitors in the retail FX market space.

ODL no longer exists. ODL is FXCM.
So indeed, presumably, the white labeling contract between FXCM and Barclays may allow FXCM to retrieve personal data for their own marketing purposes. Or, being the technology provider, FXCM may have just called you on behind of Barclays in order to attend any of your platform concerns.
Whichever the nature of the call you received falls under one of the two categories, so you tell us.

 

[Purple Brain]

ODL no longer exists. ODL is FXCM.
So indeed, presumably, the white labeling contract between FXCM and Barclays may allow FXCM to retrieve personal data for their own marketing purposes. Or, being the technology provider, FXCM may have just called you on behind of Barclays in order to attend any of your platform concerns.
Whichever the nature of the call you received falls under one of the two categories, so you tell us.

The nature of the call was ostensibly the latter, but when I queried the chap about him calling from the ODL number he said he had never heard on them and he was calling from Barclays Margin FX. I suppose it is possible that someone new may not have been aware of the relationship, but that in itself would be disappointing rather than suspicious which is where I was before your much appreciated response.

Either way, I'll be sticking with OANDA as their spreads are at least 50% tighter than Barclays Margin FX across all the 28 majors pairs I compared. The BMFX platform was sluggish and I tried both the web-based and downloaded desktop variants. The options were far from intuitive and the layout, though customisable, didn't have a clean feel about it.

It might be better the devil you know or perhaps it's just me being lazy. Either way, they haven't shown me they can give me a better deal or a better operational edge on trading FX than I already have.

Thanks again for providing clarity on the ODL/FXCM/BMFX relationship.

 

[The Artist]

The nature of the call was ostensibly the latter, but when I queried the chap about him calling from the ODL number he said he had never heard on them and he was calling from Barclays Margin FX. I suppose it is possible that someone new may not have been aware of the relationship, but that in itself would be disappointing rather than suspicious which is where I was before your much appreciated response.

Either way, I'll be sticking with OANDA as their spreads are at least 50% tighter than Barclays Margin FX across all the 28 majors pairs I compared. The BMFX platform was sluggish and I tried both the web-based and downloaded desktop variants. The options were far from intuitive and the layout, though customisable, didn't have a clean feel about it.

It might be better the devil you know or perhaps it's just me being lazy. Either way, they haven't shown me they can give me a better deal or a better operational edge on trading FX than I already have.

Thanks again for providing clarity on the ODL/FXCM/BMFX relationship.

Yeah that's not surprising, Barclays makes more than enough money from BARX to care much about retail. And so far they're right on track to follow in DBFX's footsteps.