A regulatory filing by TechFinancials has revealed that the company was slapped with a fine from Italian financial regulator CONSOB. The authorities have enacted the penalty retroactively after back in 2013 a number of binary options brokers were banned from the Italian web for providing their services without proper authorization.
With the announcement from TechFinancials that the company’s subsidiary B.O. TradeFinancials Limited received an administrative sanction for a total of €10,000, a number of other brokers in the binary options industry could be on the line.
The TechFinancials subsidiary, which is currently regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC ), was amongst the brokers that were banned from the Italian web space because they had provided their services without appropriate authorization.
With the fines for similar offenses reaching up to €500,000, the administrative action taken by CONSOB against the firm was not heavy and there is no apparent reason to believe that other binary options operators could get bigger fines.
Other binary options brokers included in the 2013 ban involve a number of firms currently regulated by CySEC, such as EZTrader and anyoption.
Ever since the CySEC has begun authorizing binary options companies to provide financial services, a number of brokers have been licensed by the regulator. Slowly but surely, the bulk of the industry has become regulated in order to avoid confrontation with financial markets monitors in the 28 European Union member states.
Recently, the U.K. authorities have engaged in regulating binary options as a financial product despite the reluctance of the Financial Conduct Authority to accept binary options as a financial instrument.
