Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory with its own financial regulator, the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission, and its position changed fundamentally with Brexit.

What Brexit changed

Gibraltar was in the EU through the UK's membership and left with it. The EU passport that let Gibraltar firms serve clients across the EEA is gone. A GFSC licence no longer permits soliciting clients in Spain, Germany or anywhere else in the bloc.

What survived is access in the other direction. The UK legislated to preserve market access for Gibraltar-based financial services firms into Britain, on the basis of aligned standards and cooperation between the two regulators. So a Gibraltar broker can serve UK clients; it cannot serve EU ones.

This is the practical question for anyone looking at a Gibraltar-licensed firm: where do you live? A UK resident is dealing with a firm that has legitimate access and standards aligned with the FCA's. An EU resident being solicited by one is looking at something that should not be happening.

The regime

The GFSC supervises to standards closely aligned with the UK's, including client-money segregation and conduct requirements, and Gibraltar has hosted well-known gaming and financial businesses for decades. It is not an offshore registration jurisdiction of the Saint Vincent type, and the distinction is worth making clearly. Firms serving UK clients apply the FCA-equivalent leverage caps and protections.

Compensation

Gibraltar operates its own investor compensation scheme with a statutory limit, separate from the UK's FSCS and set at a lower level than £85,000. A UK resident dealing with a Gibraltar entity therefore has less protection than with a UK-authorised firm, even though both are regulated to comparable standards. That difference is in the client agreement and rarely in the marketing.

Checks

The GFSC publishes a register of licensed firms. Confirm the entity named on your account agreement, establish which compensation scheme covers it, and — if you are in the EU — treat an approach from a Gibraltar-licensed broker as a reason to look much harder.