UAE Regulated Brokers: DFSA, SCA and ADGM Licences

Sixty-six brokers in the WIKILIX database hold a licence from a United Arab Emirates authority and carry a clean regulation status label. Twenty-five are licensed by the Dubai Financial Services Authority, 32 by the federal Securities and Commodities Authority and 13 by Abu Dhabi Global Market, and four firms hold two of the three at once.

Scores on this page run from 19.8 to 85.3, with a median of 52.1, so the grid mixes large multi-licensed groups with small local brokerages. IG is the oldest firm here, recorded as opening in 1974, and its card lists eight authorities including the DFSA. ED&F Man Capital Markets sits top on 85.3. Ebury and Swissquote both hold their UAE permission as a DFSA entry alongside an FCA record, while Amana Capital is one of only 12 firms on the page actually headquartered in the Emirates and one of the four carrying both a DFSA and an SCA licence.

What "UAE regulated" means on this page

This list is built on licences. Not on addresses, and not on who a broker will accept as a client. A firm qualifies when WIKILIX records at least one licence from one of three bodies.

Domicile is a separate field, and the gap between the two is wide. Twelve of the 66 are headquartered in the UAE and 10 in the United Kingdom. The remaining 41 are spread across 19 other jurisdictions, from Australia and Cyprus to Vanuatu and Vietnam, and three carry no recorded domicile at all. A DIFC arm of a London firm produces a UAE licence held by a UK company, which is what the HYCM record shows: an opening date of 1977, a UK address, and FCA and DFSA entries side by side.

How we built this list

One stored query produces it. The licence record must contain the DFSA, the SCA or ADGM, and the WIKILIX status label must read regulation. Sorting is by score, descending, and nothing is hand-placed. A broker that gains a UAE licence appears without anyone editing this page, and one whose status label changes drops out of it.

The score is WIKILIX's own composite rating, recorded per firm on a 0 to 100 scale, and it is used here for one purpose: to give the grid an order. It is not a cost measure and not a verdict on service. Forty-nine of the 66 hold licences from two or more separate authorities, 28 also hold an FCA licence and 25 an ASIC licence, which matters because a single UAE entry often sits on a much longer regulatory record.

Who is not on this page

Eighteen further brokers hold a UAE licence and are excluded by the status filter: 10 labelled offshore, four noRegulation, two suspiciousClone and two exceeded. Those are WIKILIX's own recorded labels rather than findings by any regulator, and they are the reason the page reads 66 rather than 84.

Two other groups will be missing for readers who expect them. Brokers that market to traders in the Emirates on a Seychelles or Saint Vincent licence are absent, because they hold no UAE authorisation to record. Large regional names that serve the Gulf through an offshore entity are in the same position. If a broker you were looking for is not here, the reason is the licence record, not an editorial judgement about it.

What a UAE licence does and does not cover

A licence ties one named legal entity to one supervisor and to that supervisor's rules on client money, capital and reporting. It says nothing about the entity you will actually sign with. Several groups here run more than one: ADSS lists SCA, ADGM and SFC records, and the contract decides which of them applies to your account.

Before you open an account

• Search the licence number on the authority's own register: DFSA, SCA or ADGM.
• Check that the entity named on your agreement is the licensed one, not a similarly named group company.
• Read what the permission actually allows, since some records cover advisory or asset management work rather than retail margin trading.
• Confirm the entity will accept you as a client from your country of residence before you fund anything.
• Compare the leverage on the card with what you are offered: recorded figures here run from 1:1 to 1:2000 across the 58 brokers that carry one.

What this page cannot tell you: spreads, commissions, execution quality, withdrawal times, or whether any of these firms will onboard you. None of that sits in the data behind the list. Licence records also move, so treat every entry as WIKILIX's record on the day you read it, and confirm it on the authority's register before you deposit.