During the passing week the most interesting stories from the online trading industry included the business responses of some major brokers to regulatory stress in various markets around the world. The most severe example of this is iFOREX which decided to leave the Israeli market due to diminishing profitability.
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Privatized Dispute Resolution
On Monday we reported that the Financial Commission completed its certification of the binary options platform offered by technology provider, Broctagon IT Solutions. The expanding role this private organization plays in dispute resolution shows that regulators are failing to provide an adequate solution.
Michael Lau, Chief Marketing Officer of Broctagon IT Solutions, commented: “After several years in Retail FX technology business it is nice to see that there is finally a global organization, such as Financial Commission, which can expeditiously and effectively resolve conflicts within our industry in a friendly and a professional manner. This service is way overdue. We are proud to be a part of this initiative.”
Strategic Shift
On Wednesday we broke the news that Saxo Bank has decided to phase out some of its direct operations in certain areas and close its offices in Moscow, Athens and Warsaw. The Danish multi-asset brokerage remains active in Greece, Russia and Poland, with the services to existing and new clients from the areas delivered via other Saxo Bank locations.
Speaking to Finance Magnates, the CEO of the company, Kim Fournais, said: “We are a digital business and we work with partnerships, so there are certain geographies where we think that it is better for us to work with white labels. Therefore we have decided to consolidate some of our services into fewer locations because we want to give more room to partners.”
Cold Shoulder
On Thursday the Russian central bank announced that Alpari and Forex Club have been denied a license. No further information on the reasoning of the decision has been provided after the brokers were awaiting for an answer from the mega-regulator for over 6 months.
Commenting to Finance Magnates, a company spokesperson of Forex Club stated: “We are working on complying with the formal recommendations of the central bank and are soon resubmitting our application.”
Just Two Weeks
On the same day as the Russian announcement we also reported that, in the United States, Phillip Capital withdrew from the retail FX market. The Chicago based brokerage Phillip Capital Inc. (PCI) had been expecting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to reassess its position on retail forex offerings, the CEO of the company Lynette Lim confirmed to Finance Magnates.
“We had actually just started offering Forex two weeks ago with a soft launch after spending two years on integration and had started to onboard some clients. Also, Phillip Capital has already been offering forex in the other countries and will continue to do so. The recent announcement only affects the U.S.,” Mrs Lim said.
Retail Dash Trading
This week we have also seen a retail forex broker working to attract cryptocurrency traders as FXOpen launched Dash-based pairs and was the first ever in the market to do so.
Natalia Zakharova, Head of Global Sales at FXOpen, commented to Finance Magnates: “After we introduced ETC/BTC and ETC/USD in May 2016 we received a lot of positive feedback from our clients and significant interest in ETC Liquidity . So the next logical step is to anticipate our clients future needs and introduce dashcoin, which is a hot new instrument right now.”
