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CySEC

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CySEC licenses more retail forex brokers than any other EU regulator, and its ICF pays up to €20,000 when one fails. The brokers below hold a CySEC licence.

Brokers regulated by CySEC

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission supervises investment firms in Cyprus, and it licenses more retail forex and CFD brokers than any other regulator in the European Union. That concentration is a matter of history — low corporation tax, EU membership from 2004 and an English-speaking professional sector — and it means a large share of the brokers a European trader encounters are Cypriot investment firms.

What the licence requires

A Cyprus Investment Firm holds a licence by category, with capital set under the Investment Firms Regulation and scaled to whether the firm deals on own account. Firms must appoint locally resident directors and compliance, risk and internal audit functions, and submit to on-site inspection.

Client money is held under MiFID client asset rules: segregated with credit institutions, reconciled, and reported on annually. CySEC has an active enforcement record and publishes settlements and licence withdrawals — worth reading, because the register alone does not show them.

Leverage and retail protections

ESMA product intervention applies in full and permanently: 30:1 on major currency pairs, 20:1 on non-majors, gold and major indices, 10:1 on other commodities and non-major indices, 5:1 on individual equities, 2:1 on cryptocurrencies. Margin close-out at 50% of required margin is mandatory, negative balance protection applies per account, and communications must carry the standardised risk warning with the firm's own percentage of losing retail accounts.

Clients meeting the MiFID elective professional criteria may opt up, which removes all three protections at once. That is a deliberate trade, not a settings change.

If a broker fails

The Investor Compensation Fund covers eligible retail claims where a licensed firm cannot return client money or assets, up to €20,000 per claimant. The ceiling is materially lower than the UK's £85,000, and payouts have historically been slow — but it exists, which is more than any offshore alternative offers.

Verifying a licence

CySEC publishes a register of regulated entities showing licence number, category and status, plus separate lists of announcements, settlements and warnings. Read all of them for the firm you are considering. A CIF number in a website footer confirms the company exists; it does not tell you whether the licence is currently suspended or carries conditions.

The entity question

Most Cypriot groups also run a non-EU entity — Seychelles, Belize, Saint Vincent, Vanuatu — and route clients by residence. The Cyprus licence appears on the homepage for everyone; the protections above reach only clients whose client agreement names the Cypriot company. ProForexBrokers.com checks the agreement rather than the footer for exactly this reason.