The registers, and what to type into them
Every tier-1 regulator runs a free public register. You do not need an account and you do not need to ask the broker for anything — the number is on their own website, usually in the footer or on a page called Legal Documents.
Search by the number rather than the name. Names are close enough to each other to be confusing on purpose; a licence number is not.
- FCA (United Kingdom) — the Financial Services Register. Search the firm reference number.
- CySEC (Cyprus) — the investment firms list. Numbers look like 178/12.
- ASIC (Australia) — Professional Registers. The AFS licence number is six digits.
- FSCA (South Africa) — the FSP register. Numbers are four or five digits.
- FSA Seychelles, FSC Mauritius, IFSC Belize — these publish lists rather than searchable registers, and that difference is itself worth noting.
What the statuses mean
A register entry is not a yes or no. The word beside the number is the whole point of looking.
- Authorised — the firm may do the activities listed. This is what you want.
- Registered — it is on a list, which is not the same as being supervised. Most offshore licences are this.
- Suspended — it may not take new business. Leave.
- Withdrawn or cancelled — the licence is gone. A broker still advertising it is telling you something about itself.
The name on the register is the thing people miss
A broker brand is usually several companies. The FCA entry belongs to the UK company; the person who signs up from outside Europe is usually onboarded to an offshore one with a different name, a different regulator and no compensation scheme behind it.
So the check is not "does this number exist" but "does this number belong to the company I will be a client of". Every broker page here publishes the entity map for exactly this reason — see which entity you will be onboarded to.
| 1. Find the number | On the broker’s own site, in the footer or on the legal page |
|---|---|
| 2. Search the register | By number, not by name |
| 3. Read the company name | It must match the entity in your account agreement |
| 4. Read the status | Authorised, not registered, not suspended |
| 5. Read the permissions | Some licences do not cover CFDs at all |
We run steps 1–4 automatically against the registers we can read, and every broker page says the date of the last reading — or says plainly that we have no reader for that register.
Three things a licence does not do
A licence is necessary and it is not sufficient, and the gap between those two is where most losses actually happen.
- It does not cover trading losses. No regulator refunds a bad trade, and none of them promise to.
- It does not always follow you. A compensation scheme covers clients of the licensed entity, not everybody who uses the brand.
- It does not mean the price you get is the price on the screen. Execution quality is a separate question, and one no register answers.
If you would rather start from the answer: the brokers ranked by licence are the ones holding a tier-1 licence, and each broker page shows every entity, every number, and what our last reading of the register said.