Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), the French financial regulator, has issued a warning against three unlicensed Forex brokers operating in France: Original Markets LTD, Marshall Advanced Innovation and UTC Invest.
At press time, the websites for Original Markets LTD (bloomcapitalmarkets.com) and Marshall Advanced Innovation (ksftrade.com) are unresponsive, while UTC Invest (utcinvest.com) is still accessible.
The French financial watchdog has urged investors to check the list of unauthorized & unlicensed Forex dealers operating in the country before signing up with any particular broker. The AMF also keeps a list of approved financial services firms and advises potential clients to only conduct business with firms on that list:
“If the intermediary in question is not on these lists, we strongly recommend that you should not make use of their services, as they are in breach of the applicable legislation and are not required to comply with basic rules of investor protection, information disclosure and claims handling.”The AMF’s blacklists currently contain 92 unlicensed Forex dealers and 300 unlicensed Binary Options brokers.
European regulators have been very aggressive against unregulated Forex, CFD and Binary Options outfits since the start of 2016. Dutch financial regulator AMF recently teamed up with Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch Minister of Finance, to craft new legislation that will impose stricter rules on the industry and ban dealers from advertising risky financial instruments to the general public.
And in Russia and Israel, only licensed Forex dealers are allowed to conduct business. The Bank of Russia directly oversees licensing of all FX brokers in the Russian Federation since the start of 2016.
