Further to our earlier exclusive report that Cyprus-based retail forex broker Exness has made an application to the UK financial regulator FCA to increase the scope of its FCA-licensed arm, Exness Europe Limited (Exness UK), the company today announced that Exness UK has received approval from the FCA to upgrade its permissions to a full scope, “IFPRU €730k” license.
This means that the company can now trade with its clients as principal without the matched limitation. Having acquired its full scope license, Exness UK is set to expand its global reach by becoming fully operational in the coming months.
David Morris, CEO of Exness UK stated:
This is an important step in the development of the UK arm of the Exness Group. The upgraded license will afford the company greater flexibility in its business model and will further increase transparency in pricing and execution for its clients.
Exness received its initial FCA license in September of last year, which LeapRate discussed at the time with Exness CEO Petr Valov. However the initial license was an ‘IFPRU €125K’ license, which limited Exness UK to matched principal transactions.
The plan, as per our aforementioned interview with Mr. Valov, is to use Exness UK to expand retail business in Europe, as well as provide institutional FX and liquidity services off of Exness’ large existing global volume base. Exness has grown to become one of the world’s leading retail forex brokers by volume traded, averaging $264 billion monthly in the first five months of 2017.
The company indicated to LeapRate that, since making its initial application to the FCA in late 2015, it has spent a total of about £500,000 in setting up Exness UK, beyond the capital invested in the business.