The companies, products and regulatory developments shaping the broker industry.
Firms reported 2,043 complaints in the combined category for H1 2026, up from 1,331 in H2 2025. The published grouping does not reveal which product, firm or problem drove the increase.
A reconstruction of ASIC’s 52-firm review establishes a minimum breadth of reform across five control areas. At least 11 issuers must have changed all five, but the report does not identify them or measure resulting client benefits.
Comparing ASIC’s separate GFA suspension and Trive cancellation reveals two different legal tests, a still-live review request, and safeguards that continue despite a firm’s change of status.
The US regulator settled an unregistered-broker case involving a discontinued retail CFD brand, exposing the legal roles of a platform owner, service providers and online promoters without charging all third parties.
A cross-year comparison of UK ombudsman data finds new CFD and spread-bet cases rose from 270 to 329 during 2025/26 despite a near-30% decline across financial products; lower uphold percentages describe a separate resolved cohort and cannot be multiplied by new complaints.
ASIC’s 2023 and 2026 records describe 524 retail clients misclassified as wholesale, 435 previously compensated clients, roughly A$13.1m in remediation and a separate A$10m penalty. The 89-person difference cannot by itself prove underpayment.
Comparable quarterly tables show 112 new CFD cases against 61 a year earlier, an increase of 51. The absence of an active-customer denominator and the separate cohort behind uphold rates limit what that rise establishes.
ASIC corrected its CFD product-intervention proposal from a claimed extension to 2037 to the existing statutory sunset in April 2031; the implications reach margin netting and digitally settled products.
The regulator’s consultation and media release now set a 1 April 2031 statutory sunset and a 16 November deadline; a live tracker retains the superseded 2037 logic and 9 November date.
The FCA record required Zeal’s UK company to close positions and seek permission cancellation. International terms name a separate Seychelles company; the documents do not establish a transfer of UK customers.
Original calculations from ASIC’s sector-wide review show fees at 16 per cent of retail net losses, while the regulator’s intervention prompted refunds and changes across most of the licensed CFD industry.
The FCA’s final notice records rising CFD activity, falling alerts and 2,916 alerts in a later review. An alert is a screening result, not a finding of market abuse.
StoneX’s Self-Directed/Retail FX and CFD business processed sharply less volume in its fiscal third quarter, yet earned more on each million traded. FXBrokers.ai’s reconstruction shows how mix and monetisation offset part of the activity decline—and why the wider group data point to a different result.
Plus500’s Customer Trading Performance moved from negative $38.9 million in Q1 2026 to positive $11.9 million in Q3, a $50.8 million swing around the broker’s underlying customer income. The nine-month result was nearly neutral, revealing both the volatility and the limits of the company’s most misunderstood revenue component.
An FXBrokers.ai reconstruction of four regulated-company accounts shows that similarly described UK brokers can earn their reported profit through radically different combinations of local trading income, intra-group allocations, service-company restructuring and losses. The comparison changes how broker profitability should be read.