Scope Markets, the brokerage brand owned by Rostro Group, has recently resumed its operations in China after its exit from the country in 2021. Then, the company highlighted regulatory challenges and the economic conditions that affected the demand for its services behind its exit strategy.
“Scope Markets technically never left China,” Pavel Spirin, the Chief Executive Officer at Scope Markets, told Finance Magnates in a recent interview.
“We continued to maintain select legacy relationships right across the wider Asia region in full compliance with our regulatory licenses but were not actively seeking new business. Critically our return to actively engaging with select local markets has been predicated by expanding our operations through duly authorized local partners.”
A Challenging Market
Pavel, who took over the apex role earlier this year, stressed the importance of the part of local partners in China.
“The two main differences between Chinese-speaking markets and the rest of the world are an inextricable reliance on local partner networks and the requirement for having a highly localized operating infrastructure, which is not the case, or, at least, not to the same extent, in the other regions,” he said, adding that Scope Markets, like any other platform, faced difficulty in finding “the right local partner that can then provide multi-faceted advice on how to navigate the region successfully.”
Expansion Continues
Scope Markets relaunched its services in China months after its parent, Rostro, unveiled plans to expand services in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Spirin confirmed that the Chinese expansion is a part of that expansion effort.
“The expansion into Asia is indeed a part of our geographical expansion strategy as we grow and evolve the Scope Markets brand globally,” he added. “MENA expansion falls into the same category and is progressing very well. Our goal in the next five years is to become the world’s leading trading and investment venue by bridging the gap between the complexity of the global financial ecosystem and the everyday consumer. The current and the future expansionary moves reflect this vision.”
Scope Markets offers trading services with forex and contracts for differences (CFDs) instruments. It operates globally with multiple licenses and is one of the very few brokers to have local approval in Kenya, one of the fastest-growing African markets. For its operations in China, the broker is using its existing license.
“We operate on the basis of our existing licenses with full compliance with our regulatory obligations. As a global player in financial services, we continuously seek to strengthen our regulatory regime by engaging with both global and local regulators,” the CEO added.
Is China Hostile Towards Foreign Brokers?
However, the Chinese regulator showed hostility against a few other overseas trading platforms offering services in midland China. The two highlighted ones were Futu and UP FIntech, which operates as Tiger Brokers. These platforms pulled down their apps from online stores in mainland China due to mounting regulatory pressure.
However, Spirin pointed out that those restrictions are only limited to overseas platforms that allow foreign-listed securities trading to residents in mainland China.
“My understanding is that they were offering cross-border stock brokering services to mainland China investors in excess of $50,000 per individual investor, which is in breach of China’s cross-border stock holding regulation and therefore is also in breach of the terms of the regulatory licenses these brokers hold in other jurisdictions,” he said.
“Scope Markets provide cross-border services in strict compliance with the terms of regulatory licenses we hold.”
Future Plans
Rostro Group acquired Scope Markets in February 2022. Under the new ownership, the broker’s management was heavily shuffled, and operational changes were made. The focus on expanding the Scope Markets brand globally was also accelerated.
“We will continue executing expansionary strategies globally based on the regional regulatory landscape and commercial potential. Over a longer-term timeframe, you will see a significant overhaul of the Scope Markets brand and overall offering. We are heavily investing in product and technology to align ourselves with the global developments in fintech, including trade- and invest-tech, advances in blockchain technology and self-service financial apps, AI, and advances in automation and data,” Spirin said.
“We are also very cognizant of shift in investor and labour market dynamics – especially in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia – and so we are informing our product development with these trends. There is a lot on Scope Markets’ agenda for the next 5 years, and I am personally very excited to see it becoming a reality.”
