The 10 Longest-Established VFSC Regulated Brokers

Ten brokers hold the longest operating records among the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC) licensees WIKILIX tracks with a clean regulatory standing. Two of them, Hantec Bullion and HANTEC FINANCIAL, were registered in 1990, and the youngest firms on this page opened in 2012. They are ranked by age alone, oldest first, so the order says nothing about which is best and everything about which has been trading longest.

Why longevity is the only thing ranked here

A VFSC licence is quick and inexpensive to obtain, which is part of why so many young offshore brands carry one. Time in business filters differently. A firm that has kept the same licence current for two or three decades has renewed it, stayed inspectable and traded through more than one market cycle. That is the single criterion behind this order. The WIKILIX score sits in the table for context, but it does not move a broker up or down the list.

These ten were drawn from 43 VFSC licensees with at least ten years of history, of which 17 carry a clean regulation status on WIKILIX. The oldest ten of those 17 make the page. The median score across the ten is 52.2, running from xDirect at 26.0 up to Interactive Brokers at 72.5, so a long record plainly does not guarantee a high one.

What the VFSC licence does, and what it leaves out

The Vanuatu Financial Services Commission is an offshore authority, rated tier-4 in the WIKILIX tiering, the lowest band we record. It licenses the company and expects it to meet capital and reporting conditions, but it does not run an investor compensation scheme of the kind the UK's Financial Conduct Authority or Australia's ASIC stand behind. That gap is why the other licences a broker holds matter so much on an offshore page. Nine of these ten also answer to at least one tier-1 regulator. Interactive Brokers alone lists the FCA, ASIC and SFC among eleven authorities, while Hantec Bullion, GTCFX and Vantage each pair the FCA with ASIC. Only xDirect stands on the Vanuatu licence by itself, and its 26.0 score is the lowest here.

Most of these firms are not actually in Vanuatu

Only three of the ten, HANTEC FINANCIAL, DECODE and xDirect, are domiciled in Vanuatu. The rest sit in Hong Kong, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates and hold the VFSC permit as one licence among several. A Vanuatu licence is a regulatory choice, not an address, and the registered office you would be contracting with is often somewhere else entirely. Confirm which legal entity a broker would open your account under before you read too much into the flag.

Before you open an account with an offshore-licensed broker

• Check which entity the account sits under. The VFSC-licensed company and the FCA or ASIC one are usually separate, and only one carries the stronger protections.
• Read the leverage the offshore entity offers. It ranges from 1:100 at Hantec Bullion to 1:1000 at ONE ROYAL and GTCFX here, well above what a tier-1 entity may legally offer.
• Verify the VFSC licence number on the Commission's own register, then confirm any FCA, ASIC or SFC licence on that regulator's register too.
• Treat a long history as a starting point, not a verdict. Age tells you a firm has lasted, not how it treats clients today.