The Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) warns the public against the activities of two forex brokers Dax-300 and TorOption. These companies have been offering investments without complying with Austrian financial legislation. According to the official statements, Dax-300 and TorOption are not entitled to carry out banking transactions in Austria that require a licence.
The Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) is an independent, autonomous and integrated authority for the Austrian financial market. The Austrian FMA is responsible for: contributing to the stability of Austria as a financial market; reinforcing confidence in the ability of the Austrian financial market to function; protecting investors, creditors and consumers.
Dax-300 is a Forex broker, owned and operated by ELRICS Brothers Ltd., registered offshore in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. We’d want to remind that the FSA of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines has announced that it does not issue any licenses for forex trading or brokerage nor does it regulate, monitor, supervise or license international companies, which engage in such activities.
As to the TorOption, the broker's platform has been suspended, probably due to multiple warnings from regulatory entities. The broker claimed to be owned and operated by Smart Choice Zone LP., registered in Scotland. However, it operated with no license or supervision from the respected industry authorities.
When engaging with brokers that do not operate on the grounds of a valid license, issued from a trustworthy authority, traders are putting their investments at higher risk. It is better to avoid dealing with offshore brokerages and choose properly regulated and reliable brokers. A good example of such are the ones supervised by the FCA or ASIC.
You can share your experience with Dax-300 and TorOption by commenting on this post.
Italy’s financial markets and services provider regulator CONSOB (Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa) has updated its list of forex brokers who are not licensed to operate in Italy. AllTradeMarkets and CFD2FXPRO are happened to get into the list. These firms have been offering investment services and activities to the Italian public without being authorized in the country.
Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB; Italian Companies and Exchange Commission) is the Italian governmental authority responsible for regulating the Italian securities market. The regulator is also responsible for the Italian stock exchange, the Borsa Italiana.
Are these brokers legit?
AllTradeMarkets is a Forex and Cryptocurrency broker. The company is operated by UAB ELNIRA. According to the website, AllTradeMarkets is incorporated under the laws of Lithuania and having its registered office in Vilnius. However, the local regulator, Bank of Lithuania, s well as any other regulator, does not supervise this firm.
CFD2FXPRO is a Forex and CFDs broker. The company is operated by Lion Finance Ltd, and claims to the registered in St. Vincent And The Grenadines. The company doesn't provide any contact details or regulatory information and seems like just another offshore company that should be avoided.
As to the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Financial Services Authority (FSA) registration, we keep reminding remind that FSA has announced that it does not issue any licenses for forex trading or brokerage nor does it regulate, monitor, supervise or license international companies, which engage in such activities.
Investing with a properly regulated broker is crucial for the safety of any investment. You can choose among Swiss brokers regulated by FINMA or those authorized in the UK by its FCA.
Also, you can share your trading experience with AllTradeMarkets and CFD2FXPRO by commenting on this post.
UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published a warning against the forex and CFD broker СFD Corporate. A broker has been targeting UK citizens, claiming to be authorised by FCA, while actually it is not.CFD Corporate give its investors a trading platform for Forex and CFD trading called TraderSoft. There are hundreds of assets available for trading, including Forex, Stocks, Commodities and Market Indices.According to its site www.cfdcorporate.com, the broker is based in Switzerland, but there is no regulatory information about it. The company owning the broker – Mpower Technologies Ltd – is based in Cyprus, but there's still no information about its registration, as it should've been licensed by CySec then.As to the clients' reviews, there are lot of negative ones can be found on the net. The company refuses to process their withdrawal requests and the managers are constantly pushing them to put in more money instead. Also, some people complain that after making a solid amounts from their investments and requesting withdrawals, the broker drained the account by placing numerous fake trades. The most important thing to look for at a Forex broker is a license from a legitimate government regulator like the FCA in United Kingdom or ASIC in Australia. A broker that is licensed must follow certain rules and regulations to ensure a safe trading environment. That's the main reason why you should go for a properly regulated broker. You can read our review on this broker here.
The Austrian regulator AFMA (Austrian Financial Market Authority) has issued a warning against Forex and CFD broker Tradeu2. The brokerage firm was offering financial products and services to Austrian residents without being authorized in the country.The Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) is an independent, autonomous and integrated authority for the Austrian financial market. The Austrian FMA is responsible for: contributing to the stability of Austria as a financial market; reinforcing confidence in the ability of the Austrian financial market to function; protecting investors, creditors and consumers.The broker Tradeu2 operates on the website tradeu2.com and has 4 different offices mentioned, the head office is in the St.Vincent and the Grenadines and three other offices in Italy, Germany and Spain. The broker might have an offshore license, but it doesn’t mean it can target European citizens without also being registered in those EU countries. Nonetheless, the broker does not claim to be regulated by any governmental agency and it obviously isn’t.In order to offer and provide financial services in Austria, the broker requires regulatory approval from the AFMA which it does not have.All the alerts and warnings issued by such regulators as AFMA serve to protect not only investors from fraudulent companies but, also they divide the legitimate from the illegitimate, the reputations of trustworthy firms.
UK's financial markets and service providers regulator FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) has added one more forex broker to its warning list of unauthorised companies. This time it is ISGXchange broker. FCA doesn't usually provide a lot of information about the blacklisted company, except that it claims to be located in United Kingdom and offers its services to the UK residents, but doesn't appear to be licensed by the regulator, as it is required.
ISGXchange operates on the isgxchange.com and offers customers trading with Forex assets. The firm claims to have two offices as there are two addresses provided on the website: London, United Kingdom and Copenhagen, Denmark. However, the broker is not authorized with either UK's FCA or Danish Financial Supervisory Authority. Without proper authorization, there is no way for regulators to protect investors from fraudulent activity, due to a lack of monitoring by any governing body to ensure that proper practices are being adhered to by the companies.The company is previously known as IG Options Exchange and was providing binary options trading to the customers, but was blacklisted by the main regulators. Also the clients of the company keep on leaving negative reviews on the web about aggressive and arrogant employees who refuse to release their money, when clients request it. All the warnings from the regulators are meant to protect the public from fraudulent unlawful financial activity. They proceed to tell investors to avoid dealing or investing with unregulated entities and to refrain from transferring funds to the them.You can read our review on this broker here.
Italy’s financial markets and services provider regulator CONSOB (Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa) has updated its list of forex brokers who are not licensed to operate in Italy with one new addition – 4xpremium. The broker was banned for illegally using identifying elements (company, brand, name or corporate name, headquarters, addresses, web and/or e-mail addresses, etc.) that are identical to those of companies actually authorised.
Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB; Italian Companies and Exchange Commission) is the government authority of Italy responsible for regulating the Italian securities market. This includes the regulation of the Italian stock exchange, the Borsa Italiana.
4xpremium offers trading with Forex and CFDs, including Indices, Commodities and Stocks. The company is owned and operated by Index Limited. 4xpremium doesn't disclose any information about its location, contact details or, most importantly, its regulation. Also, mentioning Cyprus jurisdiction in the terms and conditions doesn't mean the authorization from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
Although, our biggest concerns are the warning from several regulators which blacklisted 4xpremium for illegally use of identifying elements of companies actually authorised in the country. As the official CONSOB notice state, such companies are called "clone firms" and they not just use the names or addresses of the authorized entities, they may also refer to "licenses", whether valid or expired, issued by supervisory authorities to different subjects. By so doing, these subjects present themselves to potential customers as being authorised, often offering highly profitable investments in an underhand way.
Moreover, the broker has also been banned by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority as the owner-company Index Limited is a clone of the FCA-regulated Global Market Index Limited.
It is now clear that 4xpremium is way too suspicious to be dealt with. Trading with a licensed broker ensures you will not have issues withdrawing your investment. The most trustworthy brokers are those registered with such regulators as FCA in the United Kingdom and ASIC in Australia. You can read our review on this broker here.
58 Australian finance services (AFS) licensees, who were in breach of the law because they were also authorised representatives of other AFS licensees, have now had their authorisation revoked following an ASIC review.
According to section 916D of the Corporations Act 2001 (the Act), an AFS licensee cannot be the authorised representative of another AFS licensee, unless they are a general insurance underwriting agent or broker operating under a binder given by an insurer.
ASIC investigated 65 cases where AFS licence holders had also been appointed as authorised representatives by another AFS licensee. Of the 65 cases investigated, ASIC found that 58 were in breach of the law.
In circumstances where an authorisation has been granted to one AFS licensee by another, ASIC is concerned that licensees may not have appropriate compliance measures in place, resulting in potential risks to consumers.
ASIC expects AFS licensees to check ASIC’s professional registers prior to granting an authorisation to new representatives to ensure that they do not authorise a person or entity that already holds an AFS licence. AFS licensees are advised to adopt this practice as part of their onboarding process. AFS licensees wanting to become authorised representatives must give up their licence or take necessary steps to ensure that they are not in breach of the law.
UK’s financial markets and service providers regulator FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) has added one more forex broker to its warning list of unauthorized companies. This time it is a Utrade broker. FCA doesn’t usually provide a lot of information about the blacklisted company, except that it offers its services to the UK residents, but doesn’t appear to be licensed by the regulator, as it is required.The broker UTrade operates through the website www.utrade.online and offers trading in both currencies and CFDs, including stock indices and commodities. The company is owned and operated by Callpointltd s.r.l., based in Romania, Bucharest. The website provides information about "affiliates centers" which means "offices around the words". According to this info, the broker has offices in US, UK, Germany, Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong and Japan and is regulated to provide financial services in each of the mentioned countries, listing the regulator such as National Futures Association (US), FCA (UK), BaFin (Germany), ASIC (Australia), CONSOB (Italy), SFC (Hong Kong). There is one tiny discrepancy on the website - the broker is not actually registered in any of the mentioned countries by any of the regulators. The firm also claims to be a leader in online Forex trading and provides the list of its forex awards such as Best Forex Provider 2017, Best FX Broker 2017, Best FX Execution 2017 etc. After checking this info with the reliable sources, we can reassure you that UTrade has never been nominated or gotten any of these awards. We recommend to stay away from the unregulated brokers and pay more attention to the reliable and licensed ones. All the warnings from the regulators are meant to protect the public from the fraudulent unlawful financial activity. You can read our review on this broker here.
🛡️ Is BaFIN Broker Offshore or Top-tier Jurisdiction?
Top-tier
🔒 Is Top-tier Jurisdiction safe to trade?
Yes
What is BaFIN?
Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht or the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority - known as a BaFIN, is the financial regulatory authority in Germany also one of the most respected and Top-Tier Regulatory authorities known worldwide. BaFIn acts as an independent federal institution under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Finance Germany, also falls under EU Regulation of MiFID and ESMA being EU part.The German Federal Bank merged the authority along with the insurance and securities regulatory agencies and supervision.
While BaFIN holds a responsibility to supervise and regulate the financial sector in Germany, with the purpose to maintain smooth operations and harmonized offerings. The regulatory role falls in affects law enforcement towards banks, financial services institutions, insurance undertakings, and securities or derivatives brokers. (Read our article about BaFIN Brokers)
Perhaps, BaFIN is one of the largest and most valuable European regulators due to the fact of German economic and financial positions, as well as the large number of financial market firms that operate in the region. There are no doubts about BaFIN's role in the financial trading sector, since the extensive regulation regarding leveraged products, Forex and CFD trading came up together with the growth of trading offers, and followed the previous strictest development of stringent rules towards financial firms.
Moreover, BaFIN constantly develops its powers, as of 2016 a new launch was dedicated to encouraging more businesses and exposing misconduct. The major role of BaFIN ensures integrity and transparency of the German financial investment offering, along with its charge of the constant solvency and payment obligations of the regulated institutions and capability to deliver the confidence of services to their clients or traders. That means, BaFIN continuously check on the service providers and market participant in the sector and assures its strongest position on the international scale. (Read more about BaFIN's functions and role on their official website)
Why trade with a BaFIN-regulated broker?
As BaFin operates in the public interest, its primary objective is to ensure that the financial system is properly functioning and delivers stability and trust towards investors or traders. The supervision of securities, CFDs and Forex consistent of integration and protection of offering and controlled on a legal basis throughout the Securities Trading Act (WpHG), the Securities Acquisition and Takeover Act (WpUG), the Securities Prospectus Act (WpPg) and the Prospectus Act (VerkProspG).
In addition, the provisions of the Stock Exchanges pricing process are monitored by the authority in collaboration with the exchange's own trading surveillance units. In simple words, that means that BaFin as a German authority does not only register or regulated financial market participants, but also supervises exchange-like trading systems and subject cooperation to fulfil the functions at the international level. Therefore trading with BaFIn Brokers clients are ensured of transparency and strict obligation to the laws.
The Federal Chamber establishes special guidelines for regulated members and particularly interprets an operational standard that enables safety and transparent measures towards traders. The list includes segregation of the client’s funds from the company's operational ones at all time and enabled negative balance protection. This assures that the trader’s funds are safe and not reachable by the company, as well as that volatility market conditions won’t affect the trader’s account into a loss of balance more than the initial invested capital. As a general mean, the regulator acts and enables new rules and controls according to the new developments and findings, therefore current issues follow numerous rules towards Crypto trading and leverage restrictions, while the needs are not to be between 2:1 and 30:1.
Moreover, with the purpose to protect consumer rights, which is among the top responsibilities of BaFin, the authority serves the Consumer Advisory Council that analysis information about the financial markets and prevents broker’s manipulations. The BaFin broker submits reports on a periodic basis and submits information on company orders, lending and all forms of assets along with disclosure reports. The required regulation allows BaFIN to request operational information, and conduct supervisory or analysis at any time, while in case the regulated broker does not comply with necessary standards this may cost a backwash.
In the past German authority has hardly made use of enforcement, however recently BaFIN is an effect to initiate legal action when it discovers suspicion of a crime, including market manipulation, illegal action, insider trading or establishment of fraud. Further actions include the creation of a working group together with a professional to define objectives, publication of found information to the public, imposition of fines and heavy penalties, and even raising of a criminal complaint against persons or companies. In addition, BaFIN has the power to ban a product or dealer offer, remove the directors, suspend shareholders and appoint outside supervision.
Overall, throughout the strict regulatory guidelines, the trader and investor are protected at any stage or scenario from the account opening, and trading process, up to the unlikely events of the broker’s insolvency. BaFIN is responsible for the statutory compensation and guarantee scheme plan, which is mandatory to join with the purpose to protect customers’ deposits. The mechanism clarified compensation up to 100,000€ which any client is entitled to receive.
BaFIN Brokers Requirements and Regulation
From the application of the license, until the company officially obtains its registration, the firm will pass through a serious check of the performance, and its maintenance of sustainability and trust, while their shareholders are required to check also, along with a large number of control systems. In fact, it is not easy to become a regulated BaFin broker and meet the necessary requirements, as minimum requirements should be sharply achieved, otherwise, the company will be suspended, in comparison offshore companies which we advise to avoid are not required to obtain almost any of those rules that guarantee safe trading account. Read Why Avoid Belize Brokers
The minimum capital requirement depends on the financial company type and averages between 50,000€ to 730,000€. While the system disciplines numerous details for the company to maintain, overall the minimum capital of an investment company which trades on its own account should be not less than 125,000€.
The broker also checked for its adequacy, should submit a business plan, acknowledge and practice essential experience, apply protection systems and have at least one year of risk control with a record of at least 6 years. The directors and top management are interviewed in terms of their qualifications, so BaFin can rest assured the company's sustainability is protected by the intelligent management and experience to run a successful brokerage as well.
After its registration process the broker, as established and regulated in the EU, the company will automatically comply according to respective ESMA regulations, due to an EU directive. The broker received a regulated status maintains a physical office in Germany and is organized to comply with its mandates at all times.
Regulatory Complaint
As a part of the customer protective service, any trader or investor can file a complaint against the broker if the one faces an unfair experience with a particular company. Apart from an applied resolve procedure, which every regulated BaFin broker applied to and you should first refer to the company itself, the trader can submit a complaint in writing with the necessary details and proof of claims to BaFin. The information will be reviewed for evidence, while further the stated company will be contacted for a detailed explanation and treatment plan.
Regardless of the outcome, BaFin will give final notice to the client, in case it can resolve an issue or not since securities investment complaints are a special character and BaFin has no right to support claims. BaFin can only take action against supervised companies and check on their compliance with the agreed contractual terms and legal requirements.
If you having problems with a bank, an insurance undertaking or a German management company (Kapitalverwaltungsgesellschaft – KVG), the BaFin may respond by suggesting an out-of-court settlement of the dispute or Ombudsman Services company.
In addition, BaFin educates the population through its comprehensive information that is available to all. You may find out about financial issues, and a wealth of information about banks, insurance undertakings, and other financial services providers. BaFin also answers frequently asked questions in case there are difficulties with a company or you can find out who to contact to receive advice.
In order to help traders to verify information about the BaFin forex broker license, the authority’s official website publishes a list of regulated entities with constant updates. In addition, the regulated BaFin broker will display on the footer of its website or regulation page the BaFin license number, which is available to check through official sources. (Search for BaFIN-regulated companies on official website)
In addition, it is advised for any trader or investor to check on BaFin Broker Reviews with updates and recent news from the broker. Currently, the German regulated brokers' list on our website includes 50 BaFin Regulated Brokers and growing, check on Regulated entities by the link. Also, You can learn more about how Forex Trading Scams work in our article linked here.
Conclusion Germany BaFIN
The benefits of trading with the BaFin-regulated Forex Brokers are obvious, as the authority enabled the strictest insurance of strong brokers’ responses, responsibilities, and compliance to its high solvency standards also being Top-Tier Forex Trading authority. That monitoring products, overall run of the trading or investment proposal and other issues along with the compensation provided to the clients when necessary. Overall,the BaFin made it scrupulously to monitor regulated brokers and smooth operation of the German finance system as an important part of international turnover.
The German brokerages are computable to the successful prospective of operation, makes their utmost to develop a market and focus on fair treatment of their client and are very well regarded by us and many traders in community too. For this reason, BaFin gained high consumers rankings, as well as popularity to establish brokerage, particularly under the BaFin regulatory status.
