FINMA Regulated Brokers

Eleven brokers in the WIKILIX listings hold a licence from FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, and this page shows every one of them. Eight carry a clean regulation status, and the other three carry a warning worth reading before you go any further. FINMA sits in the top regulatory tier, so a Swiss licence is a strong signal on its own. It is not a forex-specific permission, though, and the eleven range from a bank founded in 1805 to margin-trading platforms that opened in 2019.

Ranked by WIKILIX score, the group runs from Pictet at 78.9 down to PostFinance at 38.8, with a median of 56.6. The age gap is wider than the score gap. Pictet dates to 1805, PostFinance to 1906 and LGT Bank to 1920, while FlowBank and Charles Schwab's listed entity both date to 2019. Seven of the eleven were operating before 2010, and nine hold at least one authority beyond FINMA.

What a FINMA licence actually authorises

FINMA licenses banks and securities dealers. It does not hand out a category called forex broker, which is why this short list mixes private banks with retail trading platforms. Swissquote and Dukascopy Bank are FINMA-licensed Swiss banks that also run retail platforms, at 1:100 and 1:200 respectively. Pictet and LGT are private banks whose FINMA status covers wealth management rather than margin trading, so both sit at 1:1 here. Seven of the eleven hold a second tier-1 licence alongside FINMA, most often the UK's FCA or Hong Kong's SFC, which is where a lot of their retail trading is actually run from.

The three flagged entries

WH Selfinvest and FlowBank each carry a suspicious-clone label in the WIKILIX records, and MeinTrade carries a no-regulation label even though it lists FINMA among its authorities. A clone flag means a name or branding that matches a licensed firm without a confirmed link to it, so the safest move is to look the exact legal entity up on FINMA's public register before sending any money. All three flagged firms sit in the lower half of the score order.

What this list leaves out

This is a record of who holds a FINMA licence and how each firm scores, nothing more. It says nothing about spreads, deposit methods or whether a given firm will take you on as a client from where you live. A Swiss bank licence also covers the licensed legal entity, not necessarily the trading brand you sign up with, and Swiss groups often trade through a separate subsidiary licensed somewhere else. Read each firm's own terms for those points.

• Look up the exact legal entity, not the trading brand, on FINMA's public register.
• Check whether the licence is a full banking licence or a narrower securities-dealer licence, because they cover different activities.
• Confirm the entity you deposit with is the FINMA-licensed one, since Pictet, Swissquote and others operate through several subsidiaries.
• Expect leverage to be set by the firm rather than the regulator: FINMA does not cap retail leverage the way ESMA caps it across the EU, which is how FlowBank and Dukascopy reach 1:200.