Barclays has decided to become a systematic internaliser (SI) from 3 January under MiFID II for all products including FX, rates, credit and equities.
The UK bank said the move was made in order to take on the burden of post-trade reporting under MiFID II for its clients.
Barclays added the decision to opt into the regime also sends a clear message to clients that it holds a leading position as a key liquidity provider.
Several major institutions have already registered as SIs for MiFID II including major institutions like JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley.
Deutsche Bank became the first European investment bank to establish an SI for bonds and derivatives trading also in a bid to remove the burden of post-trade reporting for its clients.
Similarly, JP Morgan opted into the regime for the same reason and became the first investment bank in the US to register to operate an SI for all fixed income trading activities.
An SI is an investment firm that deals on its own account by executing client orders outside of a regulated market, multilateral trading facility (MTF) or organised trading facility (OTF) under MiFID and MiFID II.
The regime has proved to be controversial following warnings from regulatory authorities prohibiting the use of SIs to form ulterior networks, which could operate in a similar way to broker crossing networks.