Pareto Securities

Pareto Securities Broker Overview

Pareto Securities is the brokerage arm of Pareto Securities AS, an independent full service investment bank headquartered at Dronning Mauds gate 3 in Oslo, Norway. The firm dates its business to 1986 and the operating company is registered in the Norwegian Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities under number 956 632 374. It employs several hundred staff across offices in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Singapore and Australia, and forms part of the wider Pareto Group alongside Pareto Asset Management and Pareto Bank.

Pareto Securities is not a retail forex or CFD broker. Its four service lines are brokerage, investment banking, project finance and research, and its brokerage desk covers equities, fixed income and foreign exchange for institutional clients. A retail offering exists only in Norway and Sweden, where it is an equities, funds and bond trading service rather than leveraged margin trading.

Pareto Securities Regulation and License

The group operates through separately authorised entities in each market. Pareto Securities AS states on its own compliance pages and in its General Terms and Conditions of Business that it is authorised as an investment firm and supervised by the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway, with branches in Denmark and Germany under the same home state supervision. Pareto Securities AB is stated to be supervised by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority and to hold investment firm licences under the Swedish Securities Markets Act (2007:528), and Pareto Securities Oy to be supervised by the Financial Supervisory Authority of Finland. None of these three publishes a licence number, and none was confirmed against its authority's own register in this review, so they stand as the firm's own disclosure.

The United Kingdom entity is the one carrying a verifiable reference. Pareto Securities Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority as a MiFID investment firm under FRN 194126.

Is Pareto Securities Regulated?

Yes, but as an institutional investment firm rather than as a retail trading venue. The FCA authorisation held by Pareto Securities Limited is confirmed and in force, and its record is limited to institutional customers and states that it does not authorise retail activities. The Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish authorisations are disclosed by the firm itself and were not independently confirmed here. A prospective client should understand that being supervised as an investment bank is not the same thing as holding a retail derivatives permission.

Pareto Securities Limited and the Group Entities

The legal entity a client contracts with depends on where that client lives, which matters because the FCA reference belongs to only one of them. Pareto Securities Limited, company number 03994976, is registered at UK Companies House as active, incorporated on 16 May 2000 at 11 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DS, and is wholly owned by Pareto Securities AS. Its own regulatory disclosure describes a non complex business model with a limited scope of permissions, focused on stockbroking, corporate finance and investment services in the international natural resources sector. Other group entities include Pareto Securities AB in Sweden (556206-8956), Pareto Securities Oy in Finland (2045188-8) and Pareto Securities Pte. Ltd. in Singapore (200602942R).

Pareto Securities License 194126

FRN 194126 is held by Pareto Securities Limited and takes effect from 1 December 2001. The reference pre-dates the brand because it was first issued to Ocean Equities Limited, which Pareto Securities AS acquired in December 2013 and subsequently renamed. The firm states it has been FCA authorised under this reference since 2003. The licence record carries no expiry date and shows the authorisation as current, with the customer type recorded as institutional.

Is Pareto Securities Safe?

The firm's client protection arrangements are documented and substantive, with one gap that matters specifically to foreign exchange. Its General Terms and Conditions of Business commit to keeping client assets separate from the firm's own assets and protected against its creditors, with cash held in client accounts at a bank and securities transferred to the client's own account in the Norwegian Central Securities Depository. Pareto is a member of the Norwegian Investor Compensation Scheme, which covers a maximum of NOK 200,000 per client. Foreign exchange activities fall outside the scope of that scheme, which the terms state plainly.

Two further limits are worth knowing. The UK entity's own disclosure states that it does not hold client money or safeguard client assets, so UK exposure is not equivalent to the Norwegian arrangement. Separately, our research records a published warning from October 2014 concerning an unauthorised operation using the Pareto Securities name and presenting itself as the authorised firm. We could not confirm the present status of that warning in this review, but anyone approached by a party trading on this name should verify the entity and contact route independently before sending money.

Pareto Securities Spreads, Commissions and Fees

Costs are charged as brokerage commission rather than as a dealing spread, which follows from the agency model. The firm publishes separate costs and charges and price list documents for its Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish entities in the compliance section of its site, and the applicable rates differ between them. No single headline commission rate, minimum deposit or account tier is published anywhere on the site.

Pareto Securities Trading Platforms

Pareto Securities offers its own systems rather than a third party retail platform, and does not provide MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 or cTrader. Client access runs through its online service, and the firm describes a range from straightforward web pages to more advanced systems intended for full time traders. For institutional clients it offers direct market access with FIX connectivity, smart order routing and algorithmic strategies, and it acts as a liquidity provider for smaller listed companies in Scandinavia and Germany. The Norwegian and Swedish retail service covers online trading in shares listed across 16 markets, securities lending and financing, a mutual fund centre, and bond and over the counter trading.

Pareto Securities Support

Support is delivered through named local offices rather than a central help desk, and there is no live chat. The Oslo headquarters can be reached on +47 22 87 87 00, with separate trading desk, online desk and customer service numbers, and each of the Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, London, Frankfurt, Zurich and Singapore offices publishes its own number and street address. General enquiries go to info@paretosec.com, with dedicated addresses for Norwegian and Swedish retail clients. Complaints are handled under a published policy, and a client who remains dissatisfied can escalate to the Ethics Council of the Norwegian Securities Dealers Association.

Pareto Securities Pros and Cons

Strengths:

• A confirmed and in force FCA authorisation under FRN 194126, held by an entity verified as active at UK Companies House.
• An operating company verifiable in Norway's official register with a documented corporate history, real share capital and current annual filings.
• Segregated client assets and membership of a statutory investor compensation scheme, with an independent complaints escalation route.
• Named physical offices and direct telephone numbers in ten countries rather than a single anonymous contact form.

Limitations:

• Not a retail forex or CFD provider, and the FCA record explicitly does not authorise retail activities.
• Foreign exchange activity sits outside the Norwegian Investor Compensation Scheme.
• The Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish authorisations are published without licence numbers.
• No minimum deposit, leverage, spread or account tier information is published, so costs cannot be compared before contact.
• Self service onboarding is limited to Norway, Sweden and Finland, with everyone else routed to a local office.

Pareto Securities Review and Assessment

Pareto Securities is a long established Nordic investment bank whose corporate identity and UK authorisation both stand up to checking, and the practical question for most readers is not whether it is genuine but whether it does what they are looking for. Someone seeking a leveraged foreign exchange or CFD account is looking at the wrong type of firm, and someone in Norway or Sweden looking for an equities and funds broker with institutional research behind it is looking at a credible one. The single point to settle before any contact is which legal entity would be on the other side of the agreement, because the protections and the regulator differ by country and only the UK entity carries a public reference number.