Barclays' £500m for forex settlements is not enough, says chief Antony Jenkins

Barclays' chief executive has admitted that the £500m the bank has set aside to settle allegations of foreign exchange manipulation will not be enough.

Antony Jenkins told Sky News that he expects future settlements with US authorities to push Barclays' total settlement figure to more than £500m.

"My expectation is it will be a bigger number than that," Mr Jenkins said, adding that the British lender hoped to reach a settlement with regulators "in the course of next year".

The banking boss asserted, however, that Barclays had made progress in changing its culture.

"You've got to have a robust culture which defines what the company is about. Just as in this country we have laws, and people obey those laws mostly because it's the right thing to do, sometimes you have situations where people don't obey the law and you need a policing function - in a bank, that's called the compliance department.

"Banks didn't have strong enough compliance departments. We've moved to strengthen ours. As I've always said, changing culture takes time. We're making progress - the industry has come a long way on both topics but we have work to do."

Barclays became the first British bank to set aside money for settlements but was not among the six banks that paid £2.7bn to settle claims with UK, US and Swiss regulators last month.

Barclays rejected that early settlement, saying it wanted to wait for a co-ordinated deal with other regulators, suggesting the total bill for the scandal could top £3bn.

Earlier this month New York’s Department of Financial Services (DFS), led by Benjamin Lawsky, claimed that Barclays and Deutsche Bank may have programmed automated trading platforms to systematically rig the currency markets.

The DFS is currently investigating Barclays over forex market claims.

Using algorithms in trading systems is common practice at banks, but employing them as part of an effort to profit from manipulating forex rates could suggest the problem was more widespread than a select few traders.