38 of the 60 brokers we cover also serve clients through an offshore company
Most brokers in our directory hold a UK, EU or Australian licence and, alongside it, a company licensed in the Seychelles, the Bahamas, Vanuatu or another offshore centre. The company you sign with, not the brand, decides your protections.
Most broker brands are not one company but a group of them, each licensed somewhere different. The company that opens your account decides which rules apply to it: how much leverage you can be offered, whether a compensation scheme stands behind it if it fails, and which body hears your complaint.
Trading Business Review recently looked closely at six of the largest brands, IG, XM, Plus500, eToro, Pepperstone and IC Markets, and found that every one of them serves some clients through a company in Bermuda, Belize, the Bahamas or the Seychelles.2 We wanted to know how common that is across the whole of our directory.
What we counted
We used the licences recorded on our profiles of the 60 brokers we cover.1 We counted a licence only if we had matched it on the regulator’s own register and it was active when we checked. Each profile shows the date of that check.
By offshore we mean a company licensed in one of these financial centres: the Seychelles, the Bahamas, Vanuatu, Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Mauritius, the Cayman Islands, Curaçao and Labuan in Malaysia. Licences from other national regulators, such as South Africa’s, the UAE’s or Kenya’s, are not counted as offshore: they follow their own countries’ rules.
What we found
38 of the 60 brokers run at least one company with an offshore licence that we matched on a register. 36 of those 38 also hold a licence in the UK, the EU or Australia.
Several brokers have more than one offshore company, so the counts below add up to more than 38.
| Regulator | Brokers with a licensed company there |
|---|---|
| Financial Services Authority, Seychelles | 31 |
| Securities Commission of The Bahamas | 7 |
| Vanuatu Financial Services Commission | 4 |
| Bermuda Monetary Authority | 2 |
| Financial Services Commission, Belize | 2 |
| Financial Services Commission, British Virgin Islands | 2 |
| Labuan Financial Services Authority, Malaysia | 1 |
Six more brokers name an offshore company whose licence we could not confirm on a register: AvaTrade and OANDA in the British Virgin Islands, FXTM, Fortrade and LiteFinance in Mauritius, and RoboForex in Belize. Their profiles list these companies as unverified. That leaves 16 brokers with no offshore company in our records.
Why the company matters
Offshore does not mean unregulated. Every company we counted holds a licence we found on a regulator’s register. It means regulated under different rules from those that protect retail clients in the UK and the EU.
Leverage. In the EU, national regulators restrict how CFDs are sold to retail clients. Ireland’s measure, for example, sets the initial margin on major currency pairs at 3.33% of the position’s value, which is leverage of 30:1.4 Among the six brands Trading Business Review studied, it found offshore companies of four advertising leverage from 1:200 up to 1:5000.2
Compensation. If a UK firm fails, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme can pay up to £85,000 per eligible person.5 For a Cyprus investment firm, the Investor Compensation Fund pays up to €20,000 per claim.6 These schemes stand behind firms authorised in those countries. A client of the same group’s Seychelles or Bahamas company is that company’s client, and outside both schemes.2
Incentives. The EU restrictions also limit the benefits a provider may offer retail CFD clients, such as trading bonuses.4 Offshore companies are not bound by them.
The loss figure. UK and EU providers must publish the share of their retail accounts that lose money.3 The same brand can show different figures for different companies. ActivTrades’ UK website gives 69%, its EU website 72% and its international website, which says it operates outside the European regulatory framework, 84%.789 Pepperstone’s Bahamas company publishes 80%, against 73.6% for its UK company.2
The 38 brokers
The table lists each broker’s offshore companies and whether it also holds a UK, EU or Australian licence we could confirm. Each profile shows every company behind the brand.
| Broker | Offshore companies | Also licensed in the UK, EU or Australia |
|---|---|---|
| ActivTrades | ActivTrades Corp. (Bahamas) | Yes |
| Admirals | Admirals SC Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| ATFX | AT Global Markets (SC) Limited (Seychelles) | Yes |
| BlackBull Markets | BBG Limited (Seychelles) | No |
| Capital.com | Capital Com Online Investments Ltd (Bahamas) | Yes |
| CMC Markets | CMC Markets Bermuda Ltd (Bermuda) | Yes |
| Darwinex | Tradeslide Global Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Deriv | Deriv (Seychelles) Ltd (Seychelles); Deriv (V) Ltd (Vanuatu); Deriv Investment Bank (Labuan) Ltd. (Labuan, Malaysia) | Yes |
| easyMarkets | EF Worldwide Ltd (British Virgin Islands); EF Worldwide Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Eightcap | Eightcap Global Limited (Bahamas); Eightcap International Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Equiti | Equiti Brokerage (Seychelles) Limited (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Errante | Errante Securities (Seychelles) Limited (Seychelles) | Yes |
| eToro | eToro (Seychelles) Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Exness | Exness (SC) Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| FBS | FBS Markets Inc. (Belize); FBS Trading (Seychelles) Ltd. (Seychelles) | Yes |
| FOREX.com | StoneX International Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| FP Markets | First Prudential Markets Limited (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Fusion Markets | Fusion Markets International Ltd (Seychelles); Gleneagle Securities Pty Limited (Vanuatu) | Yes |
| FxPro | FxPro Global Markets Ltd (Bahamas); Invemonde Trading Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| GO Markets | GO Markets International Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| HFM | HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| IC Markets | Raw Trading Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| IG | IG International Limited (Bermuda) | Yes |
| INFINOX | IX Capital Group Limited (Bahamas) | Yes |
| IronFX | Notesco (BVI) Limited (British Virgin Islands) | Yes |
| JustMarkets | Just Global Markets Ltd. (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Moneta Markets | Moneta Markets Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| NAGA | NAGA Capital Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Pepperstone | Pepperstone International Markets Limited (Seychelles); Pepperstone Markets Limited (Bahamas) | Yes |
| Plus500 | Plus500SEY Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| ThinkMarkets | TF Global Markets Int Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Tickmill | Tickmill Ltd (Seychelles) | Yes |
| TMGM | Trademax Global Limited (Vanuatu); Trademax Global Markets (SE) Limited (Seychelles) | Yes |
| Trade Nation | Trade Nation Financial Markets Limited (Seychelles); Trade Nation Ltd. (Bahamas) | Yes |
| Vantage | Vantage Global Limited (Vanuatu) | Yes |
| Windsor Brokers | Windsor Brokers International Ltd (Seychelles) | No |
| XM | XM (SC) Limited (Seychelles); XM Global Limited (Belize) | Yes |
| XTB | XTB SC Limited (Seychelles) | Yes |
How to check which company you would sign with
- Start with the profile. Each of our profiles lists the companies behind the brand, where each is licensed and when we checked the licence.
- Read the client agreement before you deposit. It names the company you contract with. That company, not the brand, decides your leverage, your protections and where you can complain.
- Check the licence yourself. Our guide to checking a broker’s regulatory claim shows how to find a company on its regulator’s register.
Limits of this count
We counted licences, not clients: a company’s licence tells us where it may operate, not how many clients it serves or where they live. Our records cover the licences we found and checked; a broker may run companies we have not found. The figures describe our directory as it stood on 15 October 2026.
Sources
- 1 Broker directory and profiles (opens in a new tab)
The legal entities behind each brand and the licences we matched on regulators’ registers, each with the date we checked it.
- 2 Same brand, different rules: every retail broker we cover also runs an offshore company (opens in a new tab)
Six large brands each serve some clients through a company in Bermuda, Belize, the Bahamas or the Seychelles; the leverage those companies advertise, the compensation their clients give up, and the loss figures they publish.
- 3 60% to 77%: what brokers’ published loss figures tell you, and what they leave out (opens in a new tab)
How the UK and EU loss figures are calculated, compared across nine firms.
- 4 The Central Bank CFD Measure (opens in a new tab)
Ireland’s restrictions on CFDs for retail clients, in force from 1 August 2019. Annex I sets the initial margin at 3.33% of the notional value for pairs of major currencies; the measure also limits the benefits a provider may offer.
- 5 Investments: what we cover (opens in a new tab)
Up to £85,000 per eligible person, per firm, if the firm failed after 1 April 2019.
- 6 The Investor Compensation Fund (opens in a new tab)
The maximum compensation per claim is the lower of 90% of the client’s covered claims and €20,000.
- 7 ActivTrades UK website, home page and footer (opens in a new tab)
Names ActivTrades PLC, authorised by the FCA, and warns that 69% of retail investor accounts lose money.
- 8 ActivTrades EU website, home page and footer (opens in a new tab)
Names the Portuguese company, authorised by the CMVM, and gives a figure of 72%.
- 9 ActivTrades international website, home page and footer (opens in a new tab)
Says the site operates outside the European regulatory framework and gives a figure of 84%.
Corrections
No corrections. If you think something here is wrong, tell us.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice. Read our disclaimer.