Australia’s leading Forex broker is main beneficiary of stricter Forex regulations down under.

LeapRate Exclusive… LeapRate has learned that AxiTrader, Australia’s largest retail forex broker and a member of LeapRate’s Approved List of regulated global brokers, saw its June forex trading volumes rise 26% over May to come in at $70 billion. AxiTrader’s best-ever month came back in March, at $82 billion.

AxiTrader’s volumes the past few months:

A lot of the rise in AxiTrader’s figures was due to increased trading activity in the Asia Pacific region, as higher volatility hit the commodities space and the Yen.

However from a structural point of view, AxiTrader has seen a lot more volume come its way courtesy of smaller Australian forex brokers, since a rise in capital requirement for Australian forex brokers earlier this year. As we reported back in February, Australia’s financial regulator ASIC raised the minimum capital required for market makers to AUD$ 500,000 back in January, which will further rise to AUD$ 1 million in January 2014. The result? Several smaller Australian forex brokers effectively stopped market making, and became IBs of AxiTrader and some of the other larger and foreign forex brokers operating in the country.

For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.