A few individuals on Friday staged a protest in front of XTB’s offices in Warsaw, to ask for the return of the losses that retail investors have incurred due to a series of infringements for which the brokerage was fined 9 PLN million.
The event was organized by a local industry association called 'Trading Jam Session Foundation,’ with a few activists gathered in a city park and carried signs that call for returning money to the accounts of traders who had suffered on the detected wrongdoing.
XTB stressed shortly after the launch of the regulatory investigations in 2017 that it applies an Execution model that passes on the full benefit of price improvements to its clients.
But according to the KNF, the best execution rules were breached by XTB’s failure to pass on positive price movements on clients’ contracts between receipt of an order and its execution, while passing on negative price changes or, in some cases, not executing the trade.
XTB disputes the allegations
The vigil comes a few weeks after a Warsaw court upheld a PLN 9.9 million ($2.5 million) fine that was dished out by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (FSA) in 2018.
The company responded to the heavy penalty, saying that it “fully” disagrees with the legal argument being pursued. The brokerage claims that its “asymmetric deviation mechanism” is not violating rules to provide the best possible deal to clients and has never affected their transaction results.
XTB also challenged the initial ruling on the basis that the allegation of abusive price Slippage took place more than one year after the KNF issued its guidelines on this issue, in May 2016. It also came almost a year after the company changed its execution system so that customers can benefit from a fairer pricing model.
Trading Jam Foundation said it will continue on with its attempt to recover for XTB traders losses they suffered from unfair asymmetric deviation during the 2014 -2016 period.
