Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) has earlier today updated its set of warning lists featuring names of unauthorized investment services providers targeting Japanese investors.
The latest additions include three binary options brokers: BizOption Management Office (Bizoption), Worldoptionner Management Office (Worldoption), LFG Investment Ltd (OptionRally).
The addresses of Bizoption and Worldoption are unknown, whereas OptionRally provides an address in Hong Kong. Regardless of the fact that a binary options broker is not based in Japan, it still needs to obtain the necessary regulatory permission from the Japanese authorities, if it has a Japanese-language version of its website, that is, it targets Japanese residents. Binary options are treated as financial markets instruments (derivatives, in particular) under the Japanese law.
As none of the companies mentioned above has the necessary authorization in Japan, they made it to the warning list.
OptionRally has been in the focus of regulatory attention in the past. In September 2015, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) added the company to its Alert List. Back then, the Hong Kong watchdog stressed that OptionRally also features in the warning lists of the Ontario Securities Commission, the British Columbia Securities Commission and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority.
You can view the updated FSA warning lists by clicking here.