IG Group, a financial broker listed in London, announced that the company has decided to remove Cryptocurrencies from its offering to the retail clients based in the United Kingdom. Ahead of the removal of cryptocurrency offerings, the broker will increase margin requirements on existing positions to 100%.
According to a post by one of the administrators on the IG Community Forum, clients have been asked to close all their open spread bets and/or CFD positions on cryptocurrencies by no later than 3 pm on Wednesday 24 March 2021. After the mentioned date, the company will close open positions based on the prevailing bid/ask prices.
IG Group mentioned that the margin on Bitcoin , Bitcoin Cash, Crypto 10 Index, EOS, Ethereum, Litecoin, NEO and Stellar will increase from 3 pm Monday on 22 February.
“On 6 January we restricted UK retail clients from increasing their exposure to cryptocurrencies, in accordance with the ban imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on the sale of crypto derivatives. We have now reached our internal product limit for exposure to cryptocurrencies, and as a result, will be removing cryptocurrencies from our offering to UK retail clients. Ahead of this, we will also be increasing margin requirements. This action is taken in accordance with Term 28(3) of the latest version of the applicable customer agreement governing your account(s) with IG,” the administrator mentioned on the forum.
IG Group in 2021
The broker released Brexit guidelines in January 2021 and requested EEA clients to transfer accounts to IG Europe and verify their identities before 8 January 2021 to avoid issues. The broker has recently proposed a $1 billion acquisition of the US-based online broker and a trading education platform Tastytrade including $300 million in cash and around $700 million in the form of 61 million IG Group shares. IG Group posted strong financial results earlier this month including a 129% jump in H1 FY21 income and a significant boost in net trading volume.
