Offshore Regulated Forex Brokers: 953 on Record

An offshore regulated broker holds a licence from a financial authority in a low-tax, light-touch jurisdiction: the Seychelles FSA, the Mauritius FSC, Vanuatu's VFSC, or the Comoros body behind the MISA mark. WIKILIX tracks 953 firms with at least one licence of that kind, and that count is only half the story. The other half is that 466 of the 953 also carry a warning, from a mild exceeded-scope note to four firms marked outright as scams. An offshore licence tells you where a company filed its paperwork. It does not tell you your deposit is protected.

What puts a broker on this list

Placement here has nothing to do with a broker's head office. It is decided by the authority that issued the licence. A firm run from London can sit on this page if one of its entities is licensed offshore. Ebury, the highest score on the list at 84.8, appears because it pairs a FINTRAC registration with its FCA authorisation. The Hong Kong arm of Interactive Brokers holds eleven separate licences, several of them offshore. Most offshore regulators here sit at tier three or tier four, meaning lighter capital and conduct rules than the FCA or ASIC demand, though a few, such as South Africa's FSCA, are rated tier two.

How many carry a warning, and which

Of the 953, 487 hold a clean regulation status. The remaining 466 carry one of five flags.

That is why the score order can read oddly. Straits Financial scores 80.9 and still carries a scam flag, so it ranks high on paper and belongs nowhere near your money. The number beside each broker is a place to start reading its record, not a verdict on it.

The names that are not here

A broker licensed only onshore, holding an FCA, ASIC, or CySEC licence and nothing offshore, will not appear on this page even when it is safer than most firms that do. This list is the mirror image of the FCA register. Many companies show up on both, because they run one entity onshore and another offshore, and the account you open decides which set of rules covers you. If you want the onshore side, the FCA regulated brokers list is the place to start.

What an offshore licence does and does not protect

The trade for accepting an offshore regulator is usually leverage and fewer product limits. Offers on this list run from 1:1 at bank-owned names like Ebury and Bank of Scotland, whose roots reach back to 1695, up to 1:5000 at ACY Securities. Seychelles and Comoros entities such as taurex and CWG Markets commonly reach 1:1000, well above the caps an onshore regulator allows. What you rarely get is a compensation scheme. Lose a dispute with an offshore entity and your recourse is whatever that jurisdiction provides, which is often very little. The list is not all high-leverage newcomers, though. 344 of the 953 firms have traded for fifteen years or more, and old private banks like Pictet, licensed since 1805, sit among them.

Before you fund an offshore account

• Find the exact legal entity named on your account agreement. One brand often runs both an FCA company and an offshore one, and only the entity you sign with decides your protection.
• Take the licence number from that agreement and confirm it on the offshore regulator's own register before you deposit.
• Ask in writing whether any compensation scheme covers your balance. Most offshore licences carry none.
• Treat leverage of 1:1000 or higher as a sign you are dealing with an offshore entity, since onshore caps sit far below it.
• If WIKILIX shows a warning flag on the firm, read what the flag says before you send any funds.