HCMC

The Hellenic Capital Market Commission supervises investment firms, funds and market infrastructure in Greece. Greek investment firms hold MiFID passporting rights across the European Economic Area, and a small number of retail forex and CFD brokers are authorised there.

What authorisation requires

A Greek investment firm holds capital under the Investment Firms Regulation scaled to its permitted activities, appoints management the HCMC assesses for suitability, and maintains compliance, risk and internal audit functions. Client money is held under MiFID client asset rules with segregation and periodic reconciliation, and firms report to the HCMC on a defined schedule.

The commission publishes enforcement decisions and fines, which are worth reading alongside the register — a licence entry shows a firm exists, not how it has behaved.

Leverage and retail protections

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

If a broker fails

Greece operates a guarantee fund for investment services clients that compensates eligible claims where an authorised firm cannot return client money or instruments, up to a statutory ceiling per claimant. As with every EU scheme, cover attaches to the authorising state: a client of a Greek firm is covered by the Greek scheme wherever they live in the EEA.

Verifying an authorisation

The HCMC publishes a register of licensed investment firms alongside announcements and decisions. Confirm the exact legal entity from your client agreement, the permitted services, and that no decision restricting the licence is outstanding.

Reading a Greek licence in context

A Greek authorisation carries the same substantive protections as a Cypriot or Maltese one — the ESMA package plus a compensation scheme — because all three implement the same European rules. The differences that matter between EU regulators are supervisory intensity and enforcement history rather than the rulebook, so the enforcement page is more informative than the licence page.