How to Verify a Forex Broker's License in 5 Minutes

Before you wire your first deposit to a trading account, there's one question worth answering yourself: does this company actually hold the licence it claims to hold? The answer shouldn't come from the broker's own website, anyone can write "fully licensed and regulated" on a landing page.

The good news is that the world's major financial regulators publish free, public registers anyone can search, no account, no fee, under five minutes per company. This guide walks through exactly how to check the three regulators forex brokers cite most often, plus the warning signs most traders miss.

Why you need to verify this yourself in the first place

Here's the part that surprises a lot of people: retail forex trading is not supervised by Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It isn't classified as a securities or derivatives business under Thai law, so it falls under the Exchange Control Act B.E. 2485, which the Bank of Thailand (BOT) administers, not the SEC.

More importantly, the BOT has stated on record that it has never had a policy of licensing forex trading services for individuals in Thailand, full stop. Soliciting or offering leveraged forex trading to the public falls foul of the Exchange Control Act (up to 3 years imprisonment and/or a fine up to 20,000 THB), and organised solicitation or advertising can trigger the Emergency Decree on Fraudulent Borrowing of Money (5 to 10 years imprisonment, a fine of 500,000 to 1,000,000 THB).

Even licensed money changers in Thailand aren't exempt, the BOT is explicit that a licensed money changer still cannot offer FX trading for investment or speculation.

Two things follow from this:

• Every licence a broker cites is a foreign one, the UK, Cyprus, or Australia, never a Thai one.
• If something goes wrong, your recourse sits with that foreign regulator, a different process, a different language, and different protections than most traders assume.

With no domestic gatekeeper filtering brokers before they reach you, the verification work falls on you. And the damage figures back that up: Thailand's Anti-Online Scam Operation Center (Jan,Apr 2026) puts average losses from investment-fraud cases at roughly 346,000 THB per case, the highest of any fraud category it tracks, and names stocks/forex and crypto specifically as the highest-risk group.

Three things to gather before you search

Searches go much faster with the right inputs on hand, usually found on a broker's "About Us," "Legal," or footer pages:

1. The full legal entity name, not the marketing brand. A short consumer-facing brand might legally be registered as "XXX Markets Ltd" or "XXX Europe Ltd," a genuinely different entity.
2. The licence or reference number, usually printed in the footer, e.g. "License No. 123/45" or "Firm Reference Number 123456."
3. The issuing country, so you know which register to search.

If a broker doesn't clearly display all three, that's your first warning sign, before you've even opened a register.

How to verify an FCA licence (United Kingdom)

The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) regulates UK financial services, and its authorisation is the one brokers advertise most, since it carries real weight with traders.

How to search

1. Go to the FCA Financial Services Register
2. Search by the full legal entity name or Firm Reference Number (FRN)
3. Open the result and check these four fields

The FCA also runs a simpler consumer tool, the FCA Firm Checker, for a quick first pass, but for a firm's full history or the individuals behind it, use the full Register.

Four fields worth reading carefully

• Status, must say "Authorised." "No longer authorised" means it once held a licence but doesn't now.
• Firm Reference Number, must match, digit for digit, what the broker shows on its own site.
• Permissions/Activities, some firms are authorised for only a narrow slice of activity that doesn't actually cover what they're offering you.
• Registered address and website, should match the domain you're actually using.

That last point matters most: it's how you catch a "clone firm", a common scam pattern where fraudsters copy a genuine firm's name and licence number, then direct victims to deposit into their own accounts instead. If the website you're on doesn't match what's registered, stop there.

The FCA also maintains a Warning List of unauthorised firms, currently over 18,600 entries, many explicitly flagged as clones of authorised firms. Cross-check any broker name against it, and see TrustFinance's own monthly roundup, the FCA Warning List.

How to verify a CySEC licence (Cyprus)

CySEC (Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission) regulates from within the EU, which is exactly why so many brokers serving Asian clients hold a CySEC licence, it lets them operate across EU member states.

How to search

1. Go to CySEC's Cyprus Investment Firms (CIF) register
2. Search by company name, or by licence number in the format number/number, e.g. 123/45
3. Confirm the status is "Authorised" and check the authorisation date

A genuinely useful, often-overlooked tool: CySEC's List of Approved Domains, which tells you exactly which website domains CySEC recognises as belonging to a licensed entity, a more direct clone-firm check than the company name alone.

The CySEC-specific catch

Many brokers operate multiple entities under one brand. The CySEC-licensed entity typically serves EU clients only, clients from other regions get routed to a sister entity registered in a different jurisdiction, sometimes with weaker oversight.

The fix: read the Client Agreement at sign-up to see which legal entity you're actually contracting with, then look that name up, not the brand name from the ad.

How to verify an ASIC licence (Australia)

ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission) regulates Australian financial services; the relevant authorisation is the AFS Licence (Australian Financial Services Licence).

How to search

1. Go to ASIC Professional Registers Search (the current public register)
2. Search under Financial Services Licensee
3. Search by company name, AFS Licence Number, ACN, or ABN
4. Check the licence status and its permitted scope

Worth noting: an AFS Licence specifies which client type it covers, retail or wholesale, and the two carry different levels of protection. Confirm the licence actually covers your client category, not just that a licence exists.

Five warning signs that show up again and again

These are the patterns that recur across regulator warning lists, treat any of them as an immediate red flag.

1. The licence number doesn't match the company name

Search the licence number and a different company comes up, the clearest clone-firm signature there is.

2. The website domain doesn't match what's registered

Name and licence number check out, but the site you're using is a different domain, sometimes off by a single character, sometimes a different top-level domain entirely.

3. The status shows "previously authorised," not "currently authorised"

Some firms keep an old licence number displayed long after their status changed. Always check the current status and date, not just that a name appears in the system somewhere.

4. You're contracting with a different entity than the one that's licensed

The hardest pattern to catch, because everything else looks correct, until you read the actual contract and find the counterparty is a different company, registered somewhere with lighter oversight.

5. The licence doesn't cover what you're actually being offered

The firm is genuinely licensed, just for a different activity, e.g. authorised only as an introducing agent, not authorised to hold client funds.

You've verified the licence, what next

Holding a licence is a floor, not a guarantee. Three things worth checking alongside it:

• How strict the issuing regulator actually is, licensing standards and client protections vary significantly by country. See 5 ระดับความน่าเชื่อถือใบอนุญาตโบรกเกอร์ Forex for a breakdown by tier.
• Complaint history and warning-list status, re-check periodically, since status changes. Some regulators run continuous monitoring programs for exactly this, see License Monitoring Program (LMP).
• Real user experience, especially around withdrawals, the one thing no licence register will ever tell you.

Most importantly: verification isn't a one-time task. Licence status changes. A firm that checked out clean last year may not check out clean today, building the habit of re-checking matters more than any single search.

The bottom line

Since retail forex isn't overseen by any Thai regulator, checking a broker's foreign licence yourself is the first real line of defence you have. Fortunately, it's not complicated, the FCA, CySEC, and ASIC registers are all free, public, and take under five minutes per company.

The rule of thumb: never take the broker's word for it, always go to the source. Match the legal entity name, licence number, status, permitted scope, and website domain, all at once. If any one of them doesn't line up, you have your answer.

This article is general information on how to check public regulatory records, it is not investment advice, and it does not endorse or recommend any specific provider.