LeapRate has learned that unregulated Retail Forex and Binary Options broker Grand Capital is preparing its application to receive a CySEC license from Cyprus regulator CySEC early this year.
Stanislav Vaneev, Grand Capital
St Petersburg, Russia based Grand Capital is incorporated offshore in Seychelles. The company, founded and still run by online entrepreneur Stanislav Vaneev, has been around for about 10 years, and has grown to its current size as an unregulated broker, something it is becoming harder to do. In its home market of Russia, only six Forex broker licenses have been handed out so far by the Bank of Russia, and the regulator is pressuring non-licensed brokers such as Grand Capital to stop offering services in the country.
Grand Capital does about $5 billion a month in trading volumes.
Grand Capital, which offers Forex trading on MT4 and a webtrader as well as web based Binary Options trading, is also planning the launch of a mobile Binary Options trading app in 2017.
Assuming that Grand Capital is successful in getting a CySEC license it is going to have to change its mode of client acquisition. On its home page, Grand Capital’s first window provides deposit bonus offers of up to 200% of a trader’s deposit. That will have to go, now that CySEC has outlawed any deposit bonus schemes.
CySEC is also cracking down on superlative advertising by licensed brokers, meaning that enticements such as ‘up to 444% profit‘ which Grand Capital offers in binary options trading will also likely have to go.
Outside of Russia, Grand Capital has been popular with Japanese traders, as well as in the MENA region and in South Africa. The company claims to have opened offices recently in Warsaw and The Netherlands and provides trading seminars in South Africa, although we aren’t sure how all that was done given that Grand Capital isn’t licensed in any of those jurisdictions, which claim to allow only regulated brokers.