Promise 1
Barclays Stockbrokers works on your behalf

We are your representative - we do not take trading positions against our clients. We act for you when dealing with market makers and we select your trade’s market counterparty based on what is best for you, not us.

Promise 2
We source our pricing and liquidity from the most comprehensive list of quality counterparties in the market to ensure we get you the best prices available.

We do not believe clients are best served by brokers who do not search the market for the best trading price for their clients. In the first half of 2011, we used 72 market counterparties to place your trades. We do not take inducements from market makers so meeting our ‘best execution’ obligations and getting you the very best deal.

To demonstrate this, we will publish the number of market makers we use and disclose what share of our clients’ business is placed with the main counterparties.

Promise 3
The London Stock Exchange “yellow strip” price for a stock is not always the best price a client can achieve for their trade. We promise to beat the London Stock Exchange “yellow strip” price for a stock as frequently as possible and publish statistics on how well we do.

We use Barclays Stockbrokers Price Improver®, our automated system that polls market counterparties, to try and beat the price you see on the London Stock Exchange.

So far in 2011, we were able to improve the prices of 88% of our UK equity transactions, passing that saving straight to you. Of these, over 60% saved at least £1 per trade, one quarter saved more than £6.95 (our lowest level of commission) each trade, 20% saved more than £10 per trade, while one in 20 saved over £50 on their transaction.

Promise 4
We will not use your investments for our benefit.

Stock lending is a major aspect of institutional trading. However, the financial crisis taught us that lent stock can be difficult to retrieve if the borrower becomes insolvent. We will never lend your stock unless you ask us to.

Promise 1
We are committed to offering the widest range of investments from any broker in the market place.

We offer access to over 15,000 UK stocks, those overseas shares listed on the London Stock Exchange, and 12,000 stocks listed on 26 international exchanges. Our funds supermarket has over 1,000 funds. You can trade in other securities and asset classes such as Exchange Traded Funds, fixed income, FX, Exchange Traded Commodities, covered warrants, structured products, or through instruments such as Contracts For Difference and Financial Spread Trading.

Promise 2
We are committed to offering the widest range of trading tools and education from any broker in the market place.

We offer an extensive range of order types, including Quote & Deal, Limit, At Best, Stop and Automated Trailing Stop Loss. In addition we offer real time pricing, Level 2 market data, streaming news and advanced charting on our BARXdirect platform. Our International Trader platform delivers real time pricing, Level 2 exchange data and online Direct Market Access to 26 major global exchanges, more than any other UK stockbroker.

We also have 32 ‘How2’ videos on our website, helping you make the most of our platform, and throughout the year we run seminars across the UK where we invite you to come and meet us in person.

Promise 3
We are investing to expand the markets, products and services that we offer you and we will continue to broaden our online services and mobile technology.

This year we launched International Trader, our new online international equities platform which gives you access to 26 major global exchanges. In July 2011, we launched an upgraded version of our iPhone app for Contracts For Difference and Financial Spread Trading so you can now create watch lists, use interactive charts, see live market prices and trade all on the go.

Promise 4
We will use our position as part of the Barclays Group to get you access to its in-house research, information and publications.

In addition to the topical investment ideas we provide through our Investment ViewPoint: Comment and Analysis, we offer daily and weekly updates on global markets through Barclays Wealth’s Global Research and Investments team covering key developments and strategies across equities, fixed income and currencies. You can also benefit from specialist Barclays Wealth publications, Compass and Barclays Wealth Insights, Barclays Capital Equity Gilt Study and Barclays Capital’s FX research which is also available on our FX platform.

In times of market volatility, we also make our experts available to host client calls providing up-to-the-minute market insight and analysis.

Promise 1
We commit to having the largest, UK based, client-facing service team in the market.

In the first half of 2011, we answered almost 400,000 of your calls. Our Glasgow contact centre is open from 7.30am to 8.30pm most days of the week and 9.00am to 2.00pm on Saturdays. In addition, we extended our opening hours to 9.15pm Monday through Friday for our International Trader clients.

Promise 2
We aim to provide 100% client satisfaction

Each month we ask 2,000 clients to tell us what they think of our services and how satisfied they are with our service. So far this year, 76% of you confirmed you are satisfied or very satisfied with the service. We want this figure to be better and we are working hard to exceed your expectations.

Promise 3
We will publish our most frequent client complaints and tell you what we are doing to address them

Fees and charges – many of you have told us that you are unaware of the fees associated with some of our accounts. You want to know why and when they are charged and how you can avoid paying the fees. Earlier this year, we started to send reminder emails to clients with MarketMaster® and ISA accounts informing them that a charge was about to fall so that if they wanted to place a trade and avoid the charge, they could. We have also re-written the section on the website setting out our rates and charges to make this clearer.

Website – we realise that some of the wording on our website could be clearer. We are launching a brand new website later this year which will improve the clarity and visibility of our messages online.

Telephone Queues – we understand that some of you may have been frustrated with the time it was taking for us to answer your calls at the start of 2011 and in periods of high trading activity. We have hired more contact centre staff and have invested in almost 1,000 hours of training for our client-facing team. This will not only improve the quality of our calls but also the speed of delivery. We have also updated the ‘Ask A Question’ section of our website to help you find the answers to your queries without needing to call us. This has almost 900 answers to the most frequently asked questions.

Promise 1
We provide financial security in a challenging world.

We are part of the Barclays Group, one of the world’s largest and most secure financial institutions, with over 300 years’ history and operations in more than 50 countries.

Promise 2
We will continue to hold ourselves to the highest levels of UK regulation to ensure you benefit from the full protection that this affords.

We are regulated by the Financial Services Authority and are a member of the London Stock Exchange and PLUS Stock Exchange.

Promise 3
We promise to be there when you need us.

We know it is important to be able to trade when the time is right. We are committed to continually improving the availability and stability of our platform.

Between January and June 2011, our website was available 99.9% of the time, so you were able to use the trading platform when you needed to.

With the launch of our International Trading platform, you are now able to execute - not just place - trades online when the exchanges are open amounting to 21 hours in each day.

Promise 4
We promise to keep your personal details safe.

We will never share your personal information without your consent, unless required to do so by law or regulation. Protecting you against fraud and personal identity theft will always be our priority.

We constantly review our internal and website security to ensure we protect your personal details and minimise the risk of fraud.