Saxo leaves UK CFD and FX Association
Today, Saxo Capital Markets UK Limited, the UK subsidiary of Saxo Bank A/S, announces the decision to withdraw from the UK CFD and FX Association, a margin trading industry group. The decision follows thorough consideration of consumer protection, including the recent proposals in the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Consultation Paper (16/40).
The Saxo Bank group strongly supports the FCA’s proposals in respect of providing access to margin products for retail clients through placing responsible caps on levels of leverage offered, enhanced transparency and ensuring that the products and leverage offered are appropriate for the individual client.
Kim Fournais, Saxo Bank CEO and founder, said:
“We have decided to no longer be a member of the UK CFD and FX Association because the association was not sufficiently reflecting our views and interests. Trading CFDs and FX instruments brings a number of advantages to retail investors that have previously been the preserve of larger financial institutions. However, trading these instruments also carries risks that should not be neglected and warrant high industry standards and firm and fair regulation.“
“For the Saxo Bank group it is important that our interests are aligned with our clients’ interests. When our clients succeed, we succeed and to support that, we offer responsible levels of leverage, risk education and relevant information to clients. The Saxo Bank group supports efforts from regulators to set higher standards in the industry and the underlying aim of ensuring better protection of clients and better alignment between the interests of clients and their facilitators.“
“The Saxo Bank group takes a prudent approach to leverage and welcomes the proposals from the FCA to set responsible boundaries on leverage that are in fact roughly in line with the maximum leverage used by our active trading clients today. Trading with excessive leverage leads to a significant risk of frequent stop-outs which leads to client losses. We have no interest in offering clients too high leverage just to see clients being stopped out.”
The decision also follows Saxo Bank’s signing of the FX Global Code last week and Saxo Bank’s decision to voluntarily publish Enhanced Disclosure to promote increased transparency in the industry.
Saxo Bank connects people to investment opportunities in global capital markets. As a provider of multi-asset trading and investment, Saxo Bank strives to empower people with a user-friendly, seamless and personalised platform experience that gives them exactly what they need, when they need it, no matter if they want to actively trade global markets or invest into their future.
Founded in 1992, Saxo Bank was one of the first financial institutions to develop an online trading platform that provided private investors with the same tools and market access as professional traders, large institutions and fund managers. Saxo combines an agile fintech mindset with close to 30 years of experience and track record in global capital markets to deliver a state-of-the-art experience to clients. The Saxo Bank Group holds four banking licenses and is well regulated globally. Saxo offers clients around the world broad access to global capital markets across asset classes, where they can trade more than 40,000 instruments in over 20 languages from one single margin account. The Saxo Bank Group also powers more than 135 financial institutions as partners by boosting the investment experience they can offer their clients via its open banking technology.
Headquartered in Copenhagen, Saxo Bank’s client assets total more than 45 billion Euros and the company has more than 2,000 financial and technology professionals in financial centers around the world including London, Singapore, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Paris, Zurich, Dubai and Tokyo.