The 10 Longest-Established SFC Regulated Brokers

Ten firms carry the longest histories among the brokers WIKILIX tracks with a licence from Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC). Ordered by recorded founding date, they run from J.P. Morgan, whose corporate roots reach back to 1799, down to Brown Brothers Harriman in 1931, and they are drawn from 160 SFC-licensed firms that already hold a decade or more of trading history.

These are not the retail brands that usually fill a list of SFC brokers. Six of the ten predate 1900: Pictet opened in Geneva in 1805, Société Générale in 1864, and HSBC, the bank Hong Kong itself grew up around, in 1865. Allianz (1890) and Manulife (1897) complete that pre-1900 group. The list leans toward long-standing institutions for a plain reason: the only thing being ranked is age.

Why founding date, and what it settles

Age is the whole ranking. We took every SFC-licensed firm with at least ten years behind it, kept only the 111 that carry a clean regulation status in our records, and ordered them by the earliest recorded founding date. Spreads, platforms and account minimums play no part in the order, because those are not what this page measures. What you get is a read on staying power: which SFC-licensed names have traded through decades of market cycles rather than a single good run.

The head office column shows the address recorded against the specific entity that holds the SFC licence, which is why J.P. Morgan and HSBC appear under Hong Kong while StoneX and Brown Brothers Harriman sit in the United States. Five of the ten are registered in Hong Kong itself, and eight of the ten hold licences from two or more authorities. Six also appear on the UK Financial Conduct Authority's register, and J.P. Morgan and HSBC both add Australia's ASIC.

What an SFC licence actually means

The Securities and Futures Commission is Hong Kong's statutory regulator for its securities and futures markets, and WIKILIX classes it as a tier-one authority. Its licences are split by activity, so a firm authorised to deal in securities is not automatically authorised to manage assets or to advise. Every firm here holds at least an SFC licence, which is why all ten count as tier-one regulated, but the founding dates belong to the wider group. A bank tracing to 1799 or 1865 was not running a Hong Kong SFC registration then; that permission is far more recent than the brand.

What being old does not tell you

A long history is not a safety rating. StoneX, founded in 1924, holds the highest score here at 85.7, while the two oldest names sit lower, and most of the group falls between 56.6 and 67.2. Several of these firms are private banks, asset managers or futures houses rather than retail forex shops, so a personal trading account may not be on offer at all. The list also says nothing about which of them will take a client from your country.

Before you open an account with any of these firms

• Find the exact legal entity that holds the SFC licence: these are global groups, and the licence usually sits with one Hong Kong subsidiary rather than the headline brand.
• Check the licence type on the SFC public register, since a dealing licence and an asset-management licence permit very different things.
• Treat the founding year as the group's, not the Hong Kong registration's, and confirm when the local entity was actually authorised.
• Read what business each firm offers retail clients before assuming you can trade forex or CFDs with a name built around institutional or private banking.