Is IC Markets FCA Regulated? What the FCA Records Show

No. IC Markets (now trading as IC) is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and no company in the IC group holds UK permission today. The FCA has gone further than silence. Since 1 October 2024 its Warning List has carried an entry against IC Markets Global, updated on 10 August 2026 to name the new ic.com website, telling UK consumers to avoid dealing with the firm. IC does hold real licences elsewhere, in Australia, Cyprus, the Seychelles, the Bahamas and Kenya. None of them gives a UK resident the protection of FCA rules, the Financial Ombudsman Service or the FSCS.

Plenty of pages still say otherwise. Some describe IC as "FCA registered" because of an old passport record, and a few promise FSCS cover of up to £120,000. Both claims are wrong. Below we go through the three FCA records that mention IC Markets, explain each in plain English, and list the licences the group does hold.

Three FCA records, three different stories

Search the FCA’s website for IC Markets and three separate entries come up. They look alike at a glance, which is why so many people misread them. Each says something different, and only one of them is about fraudsters.

1. The Warning List entry against IC Markets Global

Most important is the Warning List entry titled "IC Markets Global (https://www.icmarkets.com/global/en/ and https://www.ic.com/en/)". The FCA first published it on 1 October 2024 and updated it on 10 August 2026, a month after the brand moved to ic.com. Its wording is blunt: "This firm is not authorised by us and may be targeting people in the UK." It tells consumers to avoid dealing with the firm and says UK customers won’t have access to the Financial Ombudsman Service or be protected by the FSCS. You can read it on the FCA website.

Put simply, the regulator has looked at the offshore IC operation, concluded that it may be marketing to UK residents, and confirmed that it has no UK permission to do so. The phone number on the warning matches IC’s own Seychelles support line. So this entry concerns the genuine offshore business, not an impostor using its name. Our piece on the FCA warning and existing accounts covers what it means if you already trade there.

2. IC Markets (EU) Ltd, FRN 827935

A second record sits on the Financial Services Register itself. IC Markets (EU) Ltd, the Cyprus company regulated by CySEC, received firm reference number 827935 when it used its EU passport to offer services into the UK. After Brexit the passport gave way to the Temporary Permissions Regime, a bridge that let EU firms keep serving UK clients while they applied for full UK authorisation. That regime closed on 30 December 2023 and no firm remains in it. Secondary sources give 11 December 2023 as the date IC’s temporary permission was cancelled.

An FRN on the Register does not mean a firm is authorised today. Old records stay online as history, so read the status field rather than stopping at the number. For IC Markets (EU) Ltd there is no current UK permission. It cannot deal with UK retail clients, and its own website says the information on it is not intended for residents of the United Kingdom.

3. The clone warning

The third entry is a clone warning first published on 7 January 2022 and last updated on 30 August 2024. It concerns fraudsters who copied the name and FRN of IC Markets (EU) Ltd to pose as an authorised firm, using websites such as icmarketpro.com and icm-market.com. Those people have no connection with IC at all. Our article on IC Markets clone sites shows how to spot them.

The licences IC does hold

None of this makes IC unregulated in the global sense, since the group runs five licensed companies. The difficulty for a UK reader is that each licence protects the clients of that particular company under that country’s rules, and a UK resident is not a client of most of them.

Regulators differ a great deal. ASIC and CySEC are onshore supervisors with retail leverage caps and, in Cyprus’s case, an investor compensation fund. The Seychelles FSA is an offshore regulator with lighter rules: IC’s Seychelles company offers leverage of up to 1:5000 on MT4 and MT5 and does not guarantee the negative balance protection that UK and EU retail clients take for granted. In July 2024 CySEC reportedly fined IC Markets (EU) EUR 200,000 over EU clients being offered up to 1:1000 leverage through offshore arms, a sign that regulators watch closely how the group’s companies overlap.

For a UK resident, the licence that governs you is the one named on your client agreement. Today, in practice, that is the Seychelles one. Can UK residents open an IC Markets account? explains how to confirm it from your own paperwork.

Why "FCA regulated" keeps turning up online

Several comparison sites, forum posts and chatbots still describe IC Markets as FCA regulated or FCA registered. The error usually has one of three sources. Some pages were written before December 2023, when the EU company still had its temporary permission. Others spot FRN 827935 on the Register and stop reading. A few simply copy each other.

A second, quieter mistake concerns money. Some pages claim UK clients get FSCS cover of up to £120,000. That figure is the FSCS limit for bank deposits, which rose from £85,000 on 1 December 2025. Investment firms such as CFD brokers fall under a different heading, capped at £85,000 per person per firm. Neither number applies to IC, because no IC company is an FCA-authorised firm. Our explainer on IC Markets, the FSCS and the Ombudsman sets out the real figures.

What this means if you trade with IC from the UK

A UK resident with an IC account sits entirely outside the UK regime. Compared with an FCA-authorised CFD provider, these are the differences:

• Leverage: up to 1:5000 on MT4 and MT5 and 1:1000 on cTrader, tiered by account size, against the FCA’s 30:1 cap on major pairs for retail clients.
• Negative balance: IC’s Help Centre says that if you lose more than your balance "you will bear the negative consequences". FCA rules limit a retail client’s loss to the money in the account.
• Bonuses: IC offers a deposit bonus, which FCA rules ban for retail CFD clients.
• Complaints: no route to the Financial Ombudsman. Disputes fall under Seychelles law and courts, per clause 28 of the terms.
• Compensation: no FSCS. IC points instead to a client money insurance policy of up to USD 1,000,000.
• Tax wrapper: spread betting isn’t offered, so every trade is a CFD and profits fall under capital gains tax.

IC publishes all of that openly. The real issue is that you are choosing an offshore account, and the FCA has said in writing that it does not want UK consumers doing so with this firm. For the wider trade-offs, see using an offshore broker as a UK resident.

How to check any broker’s status yourself

1. Open the FCA’s Firm Checker or the full Financial Services Register at register.fca.org.uk and search the legal company name, not the brand.
2. Read the status line. "Authorised" with current permissions is what you want. "No longer authorised" or a cancelled temporary permission means the firm can’t serve you.
3. Compare the website, phone number and email on the Register with the ones you were given. Clones copy real FRNs but use their own contact details.
4. Search the FCA Warning List for the brand name too. IC Markets Global appears on it.
5. Call the FCA consumer helpline on 0800 111 6768 if details are missing or unclear.

That takes about five minutes and settles the IC question for anyone who tries it. Our walkthrough on checking a broker on the FCA Register goes through each screen.

Is IC Markets safe for UK traders? Two separate questions

People who ask whether IC is safe are usually asking two different things at once. One is whether the firm is genuine: a real, licensed broker that holds client money and pays out, rather than a scam. The other is whether a UK resident has anything to fall back on if that firm ever lets them down. Those two answers point in opposite directions, which is why forum threads on the subject go round in circles.

On the first question, the evidence says IC is a genuine business. Five group companies hold licences from ASIC, CySEC, the Seychelles FSA, the Bahamas SCB and Kenya’s CMA, and the FCA’s Warning List entry describes the real offshore operation, not a fraud. Its review profile is large and mostly positive, with complaints clustering around email support and withdrawal checks; our summary of what UK traders say about IC Markets goes through them. The record isn’t spotless. CySEC reportedly fined the EU company EUR 200,000 in July 2024, and a class action, Bain v International Capital Markets Pty Ltd, is running in the Federal Court of Australia. IC denies the allegations and the court has made no findings.

The second question gets a plain no for a UK resident. Your account sits with Raw Trading Ltd under a Seychelles licence, so there is no FCA conduct regime, no Financial Ombudsman, no FSCS and no guaranteed negative balance protection. What protects your money is the firm’s own conduct, its Seychelles supervisor and a private insurance policy. Since the move to ic.com there is a practical safety point too: log in only through an address you have typed yourself, because lookalike login pages imitate the new domain. What the ic.com move means for UK traders covers that in detail.

Who might still use IC, and who should not

FX Recap has an affiliate relationship with IC Markets, so we want to be straight about this. Its raw pricing is competitive: Raw Spread accounts charge USD 3.50 per lot per side on MT4 and MT5, EUR/USD averages about 0.1 pips according to IC, and a GBP Raw account costs £2.75 per side. Experienced traders who understand offshore risk, keep only risk capital there and don’t need a UK complaints route sometimes accept that trade-off with their eyes open. Traders based outside the UK are in a different position altogether.

Beginners should not. Nor should anyone who wants FSCS or Ombudsman protection, anyone who would be tempted by 1:500 leverage, or anyone who wants tax-free spread betting. FCA-authorised providers such as Pepperstone (FRN 684312), IG (FRN 195355) and CMC Markets (FRN 173730) offer commission-based raw pricing or tight spreads, MetaTrader or TradingView, and spread betting under UK rules. We compare them in IC Markets alternatives for UK traders, and put the nearest match head to head in IC Markets vs Pepperstone.

Frequently asked

Related reading

• Can UK residents open an IC Markets account?
• The FCA warning on IC Markets Global explained
• IC Markets, the FSCS and the Financial Ombudsman
• What UK traders say about IC Markets
• IC Markets alternatives for UK traders
• Our IC Markets review