France financial regulator Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) has announced that it is waiving the prohibition against Binary Options, Forex and CFDs broker 24option.com on providing services on French territory.
24option parent company Rodeler Limited, which is licensed by CySEC in Cyprus, received the France ban last August, after the AMF determined that 24option was providing Binary Options trading services to French clients.
In waiving the ban, the AMF stated that 24option had taken “measures… to remedy the situation”. Meaning, that they will only market and offer to French clients leveraged trading products allowed in France, namely protected CFDs.
France and the AMF have been amongst the most vigilant and strict regulators in Europe when it comes to dealing with leveraged trading. The AMF put a blanket ban in place last August on advertising any kind of leveraged trading product n France, later clarifying that the ban did NOT apply to protected stop-loss CFDs.
The main requirement is that the broker provides a hard guaranteed stop loss to each CFD trade. CFD trades can only be opened by traders with a specified stop loss price in place. A client which hits zero equity must be stopped automatically out of all other trades, providing effective negative balance protection.
While this is obviously good news for 24option, the company has had more than its fair share of troubles and run-ins with regulators of late. 24option was one of the brokers which applied for and was denied a Forex Broker license in Russia. The company recently received a warning from New Zealand regulator FMA.
The AMF’s announcement re reinstating 24option can be seen here (in French).