Top 10 Tier-1 Regulated Brokers by WIKILIX Score

These ten brokers hold the highest WIKILIX scores among the 277 we track that carry at least one tier-1 licence. A tier-1 licence means the firm answers to a top-rung national regulator, the FCA in Britain, ASIC in Australia, the SFC in Hong Kong, the NFA in the United States and their peers. Marex leads at 91.3, and the tenth name still scores 82.2, so under nine points separate the whole table.

What sits behind the tier-1 label

Regulators are not equal, and WIKILIX sorts them into four tiers. Tier-1 is the top rung: the eight authorities represented here, the FCA, ASIC, SFC, NFA, MAS, CIRO, FINRA and France's AMF, each audit a firm's capital and require client money to be held apart from the company's own. They can also suspend or withdraw an authorisation. The order on this page is the WIKILIX score, highest first. That score reflects a firm's regulatory standing, the tier of the licences it holds and how long it has operated, as we record them. It does not price a spread, clock an execution or rate customer service, so a high score is not a promise of cheap or fast trading.

What this ranking does not tell you

Two gaps are worth naming. It says nothing about trading costs or execution speed, because those sit outside what the score reads. And a tier-1 licence in London or Sydney does not mean the firm will take you on: whether a broker accepts clients from your country is set by its own terms, not by anything on this list. Several names here are institutional houses. Marex and ED&F Man deal mainly with professional counterparties, and a retail trader may never open an account with either.

Why a second tier-1 licence matters

Nine of these ten answer to more than one tier-1 regulator, and the exception, Trading.com, still pairs its FCA authorisation with a European one. T. Rowe Price answers to five of them: the FCA, SFC, FINRA, MAS and Canada's CIRO. A firm cleared in several leading jurisdictions has passed several separate capital and conduct reviews, which is harder to arrange than a single registration. The catch is that those licences describe a group, while the account you open sits under one subsidiary and one of them. Read which entity is on your contract, and confirm it on that regulator's own register before you deposit.

The pool these ten come from runs deep on history. Its oldest member, Bank of Scotland, was chartered in 1695; HSBC dates to 1865 and Geneva's Pictet to 1805. Half of the 277 score above roughly 66, so the ten here sit well clear of the middle. Familiar retail names are in the pool but below the line: IG scores 69.5 and Saxo 61.3, both with clean records, simply lower than the leaders today. Seven of the ten opened before 2010, and only Trading.com arrived after 2012.

Before you rely on a tier-1 badge

• Read which entity holds the tier-1 licence. A group can advertise an FCA number covering a UK arm while onboarding you through an offshore one.
• Match the licence to the service. A firm's top-rung authorisation may cover institutional dealing, not the retail account you want to open.
• Check the regulator's own register, such as the FCA's Financial Services Register, for the firm's current status and permitted activities.
• Weigh the opening date. StoneX trading since 1924 and Trading.com since 2015 carry very different track records under the same badge.