Foreign exchange (forex) broker Exness, announced this Monday that it has decided to close its business in the European Union and European Economic Area - including the United Kingdom.
Exness is licensed in the EU through its two licenses granted by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC ). According to the statement released on the broker’s website today, the company is leaving its retail business to focus on its B2B offering.
“In light of an internal business decision to focus on other markets and grow our B2B operations, we have decided to close retail business in EU/EEA including the UK. As a company which values all of our clients, we realise this may be disappointing and we apologise for any inconvenience,” the company said on its website this Monday.
Exness to focus on B2B is no surprise
Although the decision for Exness to pull its retail operations out of Europe might be a surprise to some, the broker’s decision to focus more on the business-to-business sector does not come as a big surprise, as the firm has previously said it wanted to focus more in this direction.
Earlier this year in August, Finance Magnates sat down with the broker’s head of product Andrey Shamne, who revealed that Exness was planning on expanding its set of operations in the B2B sector. Until then, the firm had focused on growing its retail customer base.
“I think B2B is a natural step for any successful broker,” said Shamne at the time. “We’re probably going to be focusing on Europe first but we will look at other markets too.”
“This is the best way for us to grow in new markets. If we want to enter a new jurisdiction, we may not know the market, the players, the Payments provider or how marketing works. Providing a white label to someone that does understand those things is much easier.”
