97 Brokers Operating for 50 Years or More

Ninety-seven brokers in the WIKILIX database record an opening date of 1976 or earlier, which puts every one of them at 50 years of operation or more. This page lists all of them, oldest first. The earliest opening date on file belongs to Bank of Scotland, 17 July 1695. At the other end of the range sit three firms that opened in 1976, one of which, GF Financial Markets (UK), carries the fourth highest score on the whole list at 80.5.

Thirty-four of the 97 have been operating for a century or longer. Seventeen opened before 1900, among them J.P. Morgan (1799) and Pictet (1805). Sixty-two opened before 1950.

The 97 in numbers

How we built this list

Two filters, and nothing else. The first is a minimum of 50 years in operation, which WIKILIX derives from the opening date recorded against each broker. A firm with no opening date on file is dropped by the query rather than treated as new, so this is a list of brokers whose age we hold a record for, not a list of every old firm in the market. The second filter is our own status label, set to regulation, the label we record for a broker with licences on file and no outstanding warning against it. None of the 97 carries a scam, clone or unregulated flag.

The ordering is the opening date, ascending, and the WIKILIX score plays no part in it. Firms that opened after 1976 are absent however well known they are. The boundary moves forward by a year every year, so the 1977 cohort joins this page in 2027 without anyone editing it.

Why 45 of the 97 are domiciled in Japan

Japan accounts for 45 entries, more than Hong Kong (14), the United Kingdom (7) and the United States (6) put together. Eighteen of those Japanese firms record an opening date between 1943 and 1949.

Read that cluster carefully. The opening date in our records is the date recorded against the company, not the date it began offering leveraged currency trading to retail clients, and the gap between the two can be decades. A 1944 date on a Japanese securities house is a registration fact. This page does not present it as 80 years of retail FX business.

What 50 years does not tell you

Age is a fact about a company rather than a measure of how it treats a client. Scores across these 97 run from 15.3 to 89.0, with a median of 45.1. That is a very wide spread for a group sharing a single qualifying trait, and 31 of the 97 score 18.5 or below. Jefferies, which opened in October 1962, holds the highest score here at 89.0.

The list is also silent on what trading with these firms costs. WIKILIX holds no spread or commission data, so there is no such column and no ranking built on one. Recorded leverage is patchy: 56 of the 97 have a figure on file, 25 of those record 1:1, and only three record 1:1000. A firm sitting at 1:1 is not running a retail leveraged FX book, which is a useful reminder that this database covers dealing desks of several different kinds alongside retail brokers.

Before you open an account with any of them

• Look the licence up on the regulator's own register. UK entries can be checked against the FCA Financial Services Register, Japanese entries against the Japan Financial Services Agency.
• Confirm that the legal entity named on your account agreement is the one holding the licence. A group founded in 1865 can still contract with you through a subsidiary registered last year.
• Check which entity holds your money and what compensation scheme, if any, covers it. That follows the licence, not the age of the parent.
• Ask the firm directly how long the specific service you are signing up for has existed, rather than reading the founding year as a credential.

Everything here reflects opening dates and licences recorded in the WIKILIX database as of today. Records move, and the regulator's own register is the authority on whether a licence is current.