Forex Brokers Based in Singapore

Thirteen of the brokerage and trading firms WIKILIX tracks are headquartered in Singapore. This page lists all of them, ordered by overall score, from KGI Securities and OCBC at the top down to smaller and newer arrivals. What they share is a registered address on the island, not a common licence. That is a narrower and more precise thing than the question most searchers are really asking, and the difference is worth pinning down before you read the grid.

Head office in Singapore is not the same as a MAS licence

A firm appears here because its head office sits in Singapore. That is separate from two things people tend to fold into it. It does not mean the company holds a Capital Markets Services licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and it does not mean the company accepts clients who live in Singapore. Seven of the thirteen do hold a MAS licence, among them OCBC Securities, CMC Markets and Phillip Nova. The rest are based on the island but carry their permissions abroad, and two of them, TianFu Markets and GEX Ventures, are recorded with no regulator at all. Eleven carry a clean regulation status in our records, and those two are the exceptions.

The brokers people expect here, and why they are missing

Search for a forex broker in Singapore and the familiar results are large CFD houses that MAS has licensed to serve local traders. Most of those keep their head office in London or New York, so their registered address is not in Singapore and they fall outside this list. The reverse happens too. PhillipCapital, one of the oldest names shown, is on record through its permissions in Australia and the United States rather than a Singapore licence, though the group is Singaporean to its core. For the roster of firms MAS itself has authorised, read the MAS Financial Institutions Directory. This page answers the separate question of who is genuinely based in the country.

Why the list looks like banks, not CFD startups

The makeup of this list says something about the market. Six of the thirteen firms opened before 2000, and KGI Securities traces its Singapore business to 1955, long before retail forex existed. OCBC Securities and CGS International grew out of older banking and securities groups. That heritage shows in the leverage on offer. OCBC and CMC Markets cap out at 1:50, while PhillipCapital and POEMS sit at 1:1, the profile of a securities broker rather than a high-leverage shop. A couple run the other way, with D prime and TianFu Markets both recorded at 1:1000. The median score across the thirteen is 50.8, and eight hold at least one tier-1 licence once you count MAS, the FCA and ASIC.

Before you fund an account with a Singapore firm

• Read which legal entity the account agreement actually names. A Singapore head office can still book your account through an overseas arm with weaker protections.
• Search the firm's full legal name on the MAS register and confirm it holds the specific licence for the product you intend to trade.
• Check the MAS Investor Alert List before you deposit, since a firm that sits on neither register is one to walk away from.
• Weigh the leverage. A MAS-licensed arm at 1:50 and an offshore-licensed arm at 1:1000 are very different risk profiles even under one brand name.