Loading page
Loading page
Most trader complaints are won on paperwork rather than argument. This page sets out the escalation route in the order that works — the broker’s own complaints procedure first, then the regulator that licensed the specific entity holding your account, then the ombudsman or compensation scheme where one exists.
Work through these in order. Skipping a step usually means the next body in the chain sends you back to it.
Live chat leaves no record you control. Email the broker's formal complaints address — every regulated firm must publish one — and state the account number, the dates, the amount, what you want, and that you are invoking their formal complaints procedure. That last phrase starts a regulatory clock in most jurisdictions.
Export your statements, screenshot the platform ticket history, save every chat transcript, and photograph any promotional terms as they appeared when you accepted them. Brokers can and do change the terms page. Your own timestamped copies are what makes a claim provable.
Most regulators give a firm a fixed period to issue a final response — commonly eight weeks. You generally cannot escalate before it expires unless the firm issues a final response sooner, or refuses to engage at all. Diarise the deadline the day you send the complaint.
Not the group's best-known regulator — the specific entity named on your account agreement. A complaint about an offshore entity filed with a Tier-1 regulator will be rejected, and the delay costs you time you may not have.
Where one exists it is free to the consumer and its decisions bind the firm. A financial ombudsman handles conduct disputes — unfair terms, poor execution, blocked withdrawals from a solvent firm. A compensation scheme is different: it pays out when the firm itself has failed, up to a per-person limit.
Anyone who contacts you offering to recover funds for an upfront fee is running a second scam on the victims of the first. Regulators publish warnings about exactly this. Every legitimate route above is either free or costs you nothing but time.
| Where the entity is licensed | Regulator | Escalation after a final response |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | FCA | Financial Ombudsman Service, then FSCS if the firm has failed |
| European Union | The national competent authority of the licensing entity (e.g. BaFin, CySEC) | National ADR body, then the local investor compensation scheme |
| Australia | ASIC | Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) |
| United States | CFTC and NFA | NFA arbitration or CFTC reparations |
| South Africa | FSCA | FAIS Ombud |
| Offshore entities | The offshore licensor named in your agreement | Usually none. There is frequently no ombudsman and no compensation scheme — which is the real cost of an offshore account. |
A single complaint about a broker tells us very little. The same complaint from five unrelated traders, with consistent dates and consistent wording from the broker, tells us a great deal — and that is what changes a broker’s rating on this site.
When a pattern emerges we ask the broker to respond on the record, we re-test the specific process being complained about with our own funded account, and we check whether the licensing entity has published any relevant enforcement action. If the broker declines to respond, we publish that fact. Our findings go into the broker review and, where the issue is material, into the community ratings section.
What we cannot do is adjudicate. We have no power to compel a broker to release funds, no access to their systems, and no standing with any regulator. Filing with the regulator yourself is the step that carries weight; everything on this page is designed to get you there faster and better prepared.
This form is part of a demonstration build. It validates everything you enter and then discards it — nothing is stored, emailed, or forwarded to any broker or regulator. Please take the escalation steps above directly.
No, and neither does any legitimate review site. We are not a regulator, an ombudsman, a law firm or a fund-recovery service. What we can do is publish patterns: when the same complaint appears repeatedly against one broker, it belongs in our review of that broker.
Promotional credit that is applied without a clear, separate opt-in and then used to impose volume requirements on your own deposit is a recurring source of upheld complaints. Send the broker the terms as you accepted them, ask them to identify where you agreed to the volume condition, and escalate if they cannot.
Note the exact instrument, timestamp and volume, and compare against an independent price feed for the same second. Isolated gapping around a scheduled release is genuinely normal. Consistent one-directional slippage that only ever moves against you is not, and it is the kind of thing a regulator will look at.
Budget eight weeks for the broker's final response and a further two to six months for an ombudsman decision. Complaints that are documented from day one resolve far faster than ones reconstructed from memory six months later.
Yes — but wait until the dispute has an outcome, and then describe both the problem and how it was resolved. A review that ends 'and the funds arrived on day 34 after I escalated' is far more useful than one written in the middle of the argument.