#1
Marex Group
RegulatedUnited KingdomEst. 2005FCA
Regulation
License
Spread
91.3Score
WIKILIX records 129 brokers and dealers that hold a licence from Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission and carry a clean status label in our own files. The database holds 188 SFC licence entries in total. The other 59 sit on file with a warning label of some kind, so they are not on this page.
The list runs in WIKILIX score order, from Marex at 91.3 down to 40.2, with a median of 60.9. Marex holds FCA and NFA licences next to its SFC one. StoneX, third at 85.7, has a recorded opening date of 1924. ADMIS is the highest-placed Hong Kong entity at 84.4 and appears with two regulators, the SFC and the FCA. Pictet carries seven. Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited carries eleven, the most of any record here.
What the 129 look like
- 70 are headquartered in Hong Kong. The rest are group entities registered in the United States, mainland China, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and a dozen other places.
- 59 opened before 2000. The earliest opening date on file belongs to J.P. Morgan at 1799, followed by Societe Generale in 1864 and HSBC in 1865. The newest entries date to 2025.
- 65 hold a licence from at least one other authority. The remaining 64 appear with the SFC licence alone, and most of those are Hong Kong securities and futures houses such as WOCOM.
- 27 also hold an FCA licence, which makes the UK regulator the most common second entry in the set. At least 50 hold a second tier-1 licence of some kind.
- 37 carry no maximum leverage figure at all. Where one is recorded it runs from 1:1 to 1:2000. Much of this list is securities dealers and asset managers rather than retail CFD shops, and the leverage column reflects that.
How we built this list
Two filters, and nothing else. The first is the licence: the broker's record must carry an SFC entry. The second is the WIKILIX status label, which has to read regulation rather than one of our warning labels. That second filter does real work here. Of the twelve highest-scoring SFC licence holders in the database, four carry a warning label instead, among them our scam flag and our suspicious clone flag, and removing them changes who sits at the top of the page.
The order is the WIKILIX score, descending. That score is our own composite rating and it is used here as a sort key, not as a verdict on any firm. We hold no spread or execution data of any kind, so nothing of that sort is in it.
What an SFC licence actually covers
The Securities and Futures Commission is Hong Kong's independent statutory regulator for the securities and futures markets, and it licenses firms by regulated activity. Type 1 is dealing in securities, Type 2 is dealing in futures contracts, Type 3 is leveraged foreign exchange trading. A firm can hold Type 1 and nothing else. An SFC licence on its own therefore does not tell you a firm may offer you leveraged currency trading, and our records store the licence rather than the activity types, so that check is yours to make on the register.
Before you open an account
- Search the exact legal name on the SFC's public register of licensed persons and read which regulated activities the firm is licensed for.
- Check the CE number on your account agreement against the register entry rather than trusting the brand on the website.
- Confirm the entity you are contracting with is the licensed one. Large groups run several entities under one brand and only some of them hold the Hong Kong licence.
- Where a firm appears here with the SFC entry alone, that is what we hold. It is not proof that no other licence exists.
What this list does not tell you
It carries no spreads or minimum deposits, because WIKILIX holds no figures for them. It does not tell you whether a firm will accept you as a client either: a licence describes what a firm may do in Hong Kong, not which countries it takes business from, and a fair number of the 129 are institutional businesses that open no retail accounts at all. Everything above reflects licences recorded in our database today. A licence can be granted, varied or revoked between our checks, so confirm anything that matters on the SFC's own register before you deposit.
129brokers on this list
Researched & ranked by the Wikilix team
- #2
T. Rowe Price Group, Inc
RegulatedUnited StatesEst. 1937SFC
RegulationLicenseSpread87.9Score - #3
StoneX Group Inc.
RegulatedUnited StatesEst. 1924FCARegulationLicenseSpread85.7Score - #4
ED&F Man Capital Markets
RegulatedUnited KingdomEst. 2012SFC
RegulationLicenseSpread85.3Score - #5
Ebury Partners Markets Ltd
RegulatedUnited KingdomEst. 2009FCA
RegulationLicenseSpread84.8Score - #6
ADMIS Singapore Pte. Limited
RegulatedHong KongEst. 2008FCARegulationLicenseSpread84.4Score - #7
GF Financial Markets (UK) Limited
RegulatedUnited KingdomEst. 1976FCARegulationLicenseSpread80.5Score - #8
Pictet Group
RegulatedSwitzerlandEst. 1805SFC
RegulationLicenseSpread80.4Score - #9
DA International
RegulatedHong KongEst. 2011SFCRegulationLicenseSpread79.5Score - #10
Magic Compass
RegulatedCyprusCySEC
RegulationLicenseSpread79.0Score - #11
Brown Brothers Harriman
RegulatedUnited StatesEst. 1931SFCRegulationLicenseSpread78.9Score - #12
Wocom Group
RegulatedHong KongEst. 1970SFCRegulationLicenseSpread77.0Score
This page is a stored query rather than a hand-kept list. A firm that gains an SFC entry in our records joins it on its own, and one whose status label changes from regulation to a warning drops out of it without anyone editing this text. The counts above were measured on the day the page was built, so read them as a snapshot: 188 SFC entries in the database, 129 of them clean.
Two things are worth doing next. The first is checking a firm against its other regulators, since 27 of the 129 also hold an FCA licence and others hold ASIC, MAS or CIRO entries, and each of those registers is searchable in its own right. The second is reading the SFC register entry for the exact legal name printed on your account agreement, because the brand on a website and the licensed entity behind it are often not the same company.
The related rankings below approach the same question from other angles: brokers licensed by the FCA, by ASIC, by MAS and by CIRO, and the tier-1 cut that spans all of them. Hong Kong is the second largest domicile in the WIKILIX database after the United Kingdom, so a firm headquartered there will frequently be licensed somewhere else as well, and the reverse holds just as often.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions
Answers from the Wikilix research team about this ranking.
Most Popular Questions
Because they carry a warning label in our records. 59 of the 188 SFC licence holders in the database have a status other than regulation, including our scam and suspicious clone flags, and this page filters them out. Four of the twelve highest-scoring SFC licence holders fall into that group, which is why an unfiltered list looks different at the top.
This list cannot tell you. It is built from licences and status labels, and neither of those records which countries a firm accepts clients from. A licence describes what a firm may do in Hong Kong. Many of the 129 are institutional or asset management businesses that take no retail accounts at all, so read the firm's own client agreement and eligibility terms.
65 of the 129 are recorded with at least one authority besides the SFC, and 27 of those hold an FCA licence, the most common second regulator in the set. The other 64 appear with the SFC entry alone. Our regulator lists are deduplicated by authority, so a firm holding several SFC permissions still shows a single SFC entry.
Not on its own. The SFC licenses by activity type, and leveraged foreign exchange trading is Type 3, separate from dealing in securities under Type 1 and futures contracts under Type 2. A firm can hold Type 1 alone. WIKILIX records that a firm holds an SFC licence but not which types, so check the register entry before assuming leveraged currency trading is covered.
The Securities and Futures Commission is Hong Kong's independent statutory regulator for the securities and futures markets. It licenses firms by regulated activity type, supervises their conduct and capital, and publishes a register of every person and institution it licenses. A firm without a licence may not carry on a regulated activity in Hong Kong, and the SFC can suspend or revoke one it has granted.
J.P. Morgan, whose record carries an opening date of 1799. Societe Generale follows at 1864 and HSBC at 1865. In total, 59 of the 129 opened before 2000. These dates describe the group or entity as recorded in our database, not the date the Hong Kong licence was granted, which the SFC register shows separately.
129. That is every firm in the WIKILIX database with a recorded SFC licence and a status label of regulation. A further 59 hold an SFC licence in our records but carry a warning label instead, and they are filtered out. The page is generated from a stored query, so the number moves whenever the underlying records move.
WIKILIX records 188 firms holding a Securities and Futures Commission licence, and 129 of them carry a clean status label. They include international groups such as Marex, StoneX and T. Rowe Price alongside a large block of Hong Kong securities and futures houses like WOCOM. All 129 are listed on this page in score order, highest first.