The Longest-Established SCA Regulated Brokers

Ten firms hold a licence from the United Arab Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) and have traded for at least a decade, and this page ranks them by one measure only: how long each has been in business. The oldest, Orient Financial Brokers, has run from Dubai since 1994. The list moves forward from there to firms that opened in 2009, drawn from 26 SCA-licensed firms with a recorded opening date ten or more years back, 21 of which carry a clean regulation status.

The order is by opening date, oldest first. It is not a quality score, and it is not a recommendation.

What an SCA licence covers, and how these ten were ordered

The SCA authorises and supervises financial firms that operate in the onshore markets of the UAE, and WIKILIX records it as a tier-2, onshore authority. That sits above the offshore registries many retail brands lean on, and below the tier-1 regulators such as Britain's FCA or Australia's ASIC. A firm reaches this list on three conditions: WIKILIX holds an SCA licence for it, its recorded opening date is at least ten years old, and its status reads as regulated rather than flagged. From there the ranking is plain, oldest to newest. Where two firms share an opening date, as ICM Brokers and Arqaam both do in 2007, the higher-scoring firm goes first.

Longevity buys you one specific thing. A firm that has held client money since the 1990s has traded through the 2008 crash and the 2015 Swiss franc shock, and survival of that kind is real information. It is not a safety rating. Three of the ten score below 30 on WIKILIX's own measure, and the oldest firm, Orient Financial Brokers at 32.8, is outscored by ARFX, which opened nine years later and tops the ten at 52.2.

The names you might expect here, and why they are missing

Anyone who has shopped for an SCA broker will notice who is absent. Amana Capital, MultiBank and Capital.com all hold SCA licences, and each outscores every firm on this page, but all three opened in 2010 or later, so none is old enough for a list built on age. Ranked by score instead, they would lead. What age surfaces is the institutional side of the UAE market. Orient Financial and Al Dar are Dubai brokerages, Mashreq is a UAE bank, and SSI and VNDIRECT are Vietnamese securities houses carrying an SCA registration. These are not the leverage-led retail brands a search for a UAE trading account usually returns.

Before you open an account with any of these firms

• Confirm the SCA licence on the authority's own register, and note the exact legal entity named on it. Several firms trade under a short brand but contract through a different company, such as AR Global Limited behind ARFX.
• Check which entity would hold your account. A broker with six licences on record, as ICM Brokers has, may place UAE clients under one and clients elsewhere under another.
• Read the firm's own terms on whether it accepts residents of your country. An SCA licence covers the UAE market and says nothing about who a firm will onboard.
• Read the age in each row against the score beside it. A long history and a low score, as with SSI at 19.8, are telling you two different things about the same firm.