Recently-launched Cyprus based Retail FX and CFDs broker Capital.com has announced that it has secured a license for UK subsidiary Capital Com (UK) Limited from the FCA.
We have learned via regulatory filings that Capital.com’s shareholders injected an additional £679,000 of capital into the UK company at the beginning of this month, to satisfy the requirements for the license. The license received by Capital.com is a “125K” matched principal limited license.
Capital.com has been on somewhat of a hiring spree lately, in preparation for the FCA license and UK launch. We reported exclusively back in May that the company hired former IG and CMC senior analyst David Jones. The previous month LeapRate had exclusively reported on the hiring of former IG executive Ivan Gowan as CEO of Capital.com. Mr. Gowan also acts as a director and CEO of the FCA-licensed entity.
Last summer we reported (again, exclusively) that Capital.com had raised $25 million, spending $1.5 million of that to acquire the capital.com URL. By virtue of the financing, Capital.com is controlled by Larnabel Ventures, the investment arm of Russia’s Gutseriev family. Minority investor VP Capital, a tech and real estate investment company founded and run by Belarusian online entrepreneur Viktor Prokopenya, also has a stake in the company.
Ivan Gowan, CEO at Capital.com, explained the significance of the company’s approval by the FCA:
This is a really important step for us as a business, as we continue to expand our global footprint. The FCA is the most experienced and knowledgeable financial regulator in the world, so having its stamp of approval is particularly meaningful. As an FCA-regulated trading provider, we are now subject to the Financial Ombudsman Service, so customers can always feel confident that any issue will be resolved in a fair and impartial manner.
At Capital.com, we are committed to providing a responsible trading experience for our customers. We have rolled out a number of initiatives in recent months to support this. Our Investmate app, available for free from any mobile store, is an educational resource to help people understand trading and improve their risk management through interactive courses, quizzes, and articles. We have also integrated our platform with the leading global payment service provider WorldPay and established a new banking relationship with RBS to serve our UK customers.
Capital.com said that its unique News feature, a machine learning-based platform that can detect and analyse biases in trading behaviour which lead to sub-optimal investing, can correct these biases by giving users relevant and targeted information that helps them to make informed decisions about their trading, rather than relying on human instinct. The company stated that its recently launched web platform is another critical element in its efforts to help its traders invest more successfully, presenting data in more detail and giving users the flexibility to view that data however they want.
Ivan Gowan added:
Being approved and regulated by the FCA gives our customers the confidence that they are trusting their money with a trading provider that has met the standards of one of the world’s most respected and toughest regulators. The CFD trading market often sees short-lived providers come and go, with operations that might be better described as financial scams, but as an FCA regulated business, any prospective CFD trader can trust that we have proven ourselves to be responsible and ethical provider of financial services.