Altum: FSA licence SD194

By email at support@altumbrokers.com and by telephone on +44 20 36775454. Note that the phone number is a United Kingdom line while the licensed company sits in the Seychelles; a UK number does not mean UK regulation or a UK legal remedy. Live chat hours, support languages beyond English and a complaints address are not published.

The brand has an operating history in the range of roughly two to five years. No precise founding date is documented, and because the operating company could not be found on a public register, the age claim could not be corroborated against an incorporation record.

No investor compensation scheme covers this licence, and no client-money insurance or negative-balance protection is documented. If the company failed, recovering a deposit would mean pursuing a Seychelles company, which is slow, expensive and rarely successful for a retail client. Never deposit more than you can afford to lose entirely.

There is no evidence of a fabricated licence, a cloned identity or a regulator warning. The licence number, the licensed entity and the brand are consistent with one another. What is missing is protection rather than proof of fraud: an offshore licence with no compensation scheme, no public confirmation of the operating company, undisclosed funding terms and a documented client complaint about being unable to close a position during a fast market. Our assessment is high risk and only partly verifiable, not confirmed fraud.

No processing time is published. E-wallet withdrawals at brokers of this type typically clear within hours and bank transfers within a few business days, but Altum states nothing, so treat any timeframe you are given verbally as unconfirmed and test with a small withdrawal first.

Bank transfer, Skrill and Neteller are the named channels, and each works in both directions. Fees, minimum and maximum amounts and processing times are not disclosed, so ask support in writing for the fee schedule before funding an account.

Two pricing models. The commission-free tiers (SHIELD, Cent, PRO) quote spreads from 1.0 pips. The raw-spread tiers quote from 0.0 pips with a commission: $2.50 per lot per side on EDGE and $1.50 per lot per side on APEX. Spreads are variable, so the quoted floor is a best case, not an average.

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. MetaTrader 4 runs under a full server licence with two servers, one of them hosted in Germany, and a MetaTrader 5 server is also operated. Both platforms are available on Windows, web and mobile in their standard builds. Direct download links are not published in a form this review could confirm.

Up to 1:2000 on the Cent, EDGE and PRO accounts, 1:1000 on APEX and 1:500 on SHIELD. Leverage at that level is not permitted by any onshore regulator; it can wipe out an account on a small adverse move, so position sizing matters far more than the headline number.

The lowest published entry point is $5, which applies to the Cent, EDGE and PRO accounts. The SHIELD account starts at $250 and the APEX account requires $10,000.

The operating legal entity is ALTUM Ltd, incorporated in the Seychelles with a registered address at House of Francis, Unit 1, Ground Floor, Ile Du Port, Mahé, Seychelles. The same name appears on the licence record. No public Seychelles corporate register entry could be opened, so the company number, incorporation date and ownership behind ALTUM Ltd remain unconfirmed.

Altum operates under one permission: a derivatives trading licence numbered SD194, issued in the Seychelles to ALTUM Ltd. It is an offshore, light-touch licence, and it is the only supervision the brand claims. There is no onshore licence from an authority such as the FCA, ASIC, CySEC or the DFSA, and the permission could not be checked against the issuing authority's own register during this review.