3 Best FINMA-Regulated Forex Brokers for 2024

List of Top Forex Brokers Regulated by FINMA

Regulatory Landscape in Switzerland

Switzerland holds a special place in the world of finance due to its stable economy, political neutrality, and stringent financial regulations. When it comes to forex and CFD trading, the country sets high operational standards, largely overseen by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, more commonly known as FINMA.

For traders, choosing a FINMA-regulated broker not only adds a layer of trust but also ensures a balanced trading environment that’s built around transparency, fair play, and robust financial practices. With stringent oversight and a focus on customer protection, trading with a FINMA-regulated broker can significantly minimize systemic risks, helping you focus on strategy and performance.

How Did FX Empire Select the Best FINMA-Regulated Forex Brokers?

• Regulated by FINMA. We only selected brokers that are licensed and authorized by the Swiss national regulator, with offices in Switzerland.
• Accepting Swiss residents. Our picks for each category are Swiss-based brokers that accept local traders as clients.
• CHF as a base currency and for deposits and withdrawals. We preferred brokers with convenient offerings for Swiss traders.
• High trustworthiness. All our picks have a high level of trustfulness and comply with most of the strictest safety policies in the industry.
• Low trading fees. We looked for brokers that offer low floating spreads and round-turn commissions per traded volume.
• User-friendly and feature-rich platforms. We picked brokers with a diverse offering of trading platforms and a wide range of analytical and supporting tools.
• Diverse trading accounts. We only considered brokers with a good choice of account types that can serve traders with different preferences, experiences, and trading strategies.
• Choice of instruments. We picked brokers that offer a wide selection of tradable instruments from different asset classes.

Our team of experts has identified each broker’s strengths and weaknesses using FX Empire’s comprehensive methodology. Here’s how we test.

Now, let us go over the selected brokers for each category.

How to Choose a Forex Broker Regulated by FINMA?

In this section, I outlined the specific considerations traders need to make when looking for a FINMA-regulated broker.

What protections does FINMA ensure?

As Switzerland’s national regulator, FINMA is responsible for supervising the operations of financial institutions, banks, and other entities in the country. It also authorizes and regulates the activities of Swiss-based CFD and Forex brokers.

I outlined the most essential safety requirements in the industry, differentiating between the ones mandated by FINMA and the ones that are not available to Swiss retail traders:

• Segregation of client funds. Brokers must keep their clients’ funds in separate bank accounts from the ones used for their corporate capital. This is a universal safety requirement that ensures mitigating the risk of accounting errors.
• Negative balance protection guarantees that traders’ losses cannot exceed their account balance. This protection is indispensable when trading high-risk instruments, such as CFDs. Under FINMA regulation, CFD and forex brokers are not required to provide negative balance protection to both retail and professional traders.
• Limited market exposure. Top-tier regulators often cap leverage at 1:30 to minimize risk, while more lenient ones may allow up to 1:2000. FINMA strikes a balance by setting the maximum leverage at 1:200 for retail clients. This offers traders more freedom but also requires them to exercise greater caution due to fewer built-in protections.
• Compensation scheme. Depending on the jurisdiction where a broker is situated, a compensation scheme may also protect its clients against the company’s credit risk and liabilities. Under FINMA, Swiss brokers are required to participate in Esisuisse (the Swiss Deposit Insurance), ensuring traders by up to CHF 100,000.

Read more about Best regulated forex brokers.

How to verify if a broker is regulated by FINMA?

• Check the Broker’s Website: Legitimate, regulated brokers typically display their license number and the name of their regulator on their website, often in the footer or “About Us” section.
• Visit the Regulator’s Website: All country’s financial regulators list brokers they regulate on their website. You can access FINMA’s register here and search for the broker’s name you need.
• Contact the Regulator: If you can’t find the information you’re looking for, you can contact the regulator with the broker’s name and any other identifying information you have.
• Check for Memberships: Regulated brokers often belong to compensation schemes or organizations that protect clients’ funds. Check if the broker mentions such memberships on their website.

Check out our guide on Best European-regulated brokers.

How to check if a broker’s fees are competitive?

A broker may have 1,2, or several account types, each with different pricing mechanisms. The question is, how to know which one is best fitted for your particular style of trading? I will try to answer this question by providing an example with two distinct accounts, one STP and the other ECN:

The biggest difference between STP and ECN accounts, apart from the execution model, is the pricing mechanism. Usually, STP accounts afford commission-free trading and floating spreads, whereas ECN accounts have fixed commissions and raw spreads (typically starting from 0.1 pips). At first glance, the former sounds more favorable because you only have to pay one cost – the spread – rather than two.

Read more about Best STP forex brokers and Best ECN forex brokers.

Many brokers recognize the psychological significance of this sort of thinking and seek to exploit it by raising the spreads on their STP accounts to the point where they are no longer the more competitive option. I will now demonstrate how to do a quick test for yourself to evaluate the competitiveness of a broker’s ECN and STP accounts.

Pick an instrument, say, the EURUSD. Suppose also that the spread on the pair is 0.9 pips on a broker’s STP account and 0.1 pips on its ECN account. There is also a $6 commission for trading a 1 lot (100,000 units) contract. If the EURUSD pip value is $10, you can do a simple calculation to determine the value of a hypothetical position on the EURUSD executed on both account types. The formula is the value of a trade = spread x pip value + commission.

This is just a hypothetical example, but hopefully, it illustrates how more can be less in trading. So, it’s worthwhile evaluating the costs of a broker you consider opening an account with for yourself before doing so. And if you are still uncertain, you can always check out our database of reviews to sort out the most competitive brokers.

Check out our list of Best lowest spread forex brokers.

How to choose a trading platform?

A trading platform is your window into the market. It allows you to observe price action behavior and study potential opportunities for placing orders. Technical traders use a platform’s array of indicators, drawing tools, and other features to examine various price patterns, changes in volatility, liquidity, and so on in order to gauge the most favorable times to enter or exit the market.

The best platforms are also the most versatile ones. They include a wide spectrum of technical indicators, such as Fibonacci retracement levels, oscillators, trend-based and range-based indicators, and others, as well as drawing tools, such as trend lines, channels, wedges, etc. They are also the ones that allow you to easily scale price action up and down.

In addition to these components, when looking for a suitable platform, you must also look for efficiency. Ask yourself: Does the platform facilitate easy and rapid order placement through one-click trading? Does it support algorithmic trading via Expert Advisors (EAs)? Can it handle market, limit, and stop orders? These factors, and more, contribute to a platform’s overall effectiveness.

The two most popular retail platforms in the industry are MetaTrader 4&5. Over the years, the two have become the benchmark for simplicity and reliability. The two entries in the popular franchise have a decent range of technical indicators and drawing tools and afford multi-timeframe analysis.

Read more about best MT4 brokers and best MT5 brokers.

However, despite MetaTrader’s easy learning curve, its rugged design becomes apparent when contrasted against newer and sleeker platforms. In my estimation, MetaTrader is a good choice for newbies wanting to learn the ropes, but to take your trading to the next level, you may need something more sophisticated.

The answer of some brokers is to develop their proprietary platforms. The advantage of most such platforms is their convenience. The ability to search for instruments by asset class, scale price action up and down with ease, or execute complex box orders are benefits you cannot find in MetaTrader. To summarise, the question of choosing the best platform for you is one of simplicity vs. practicality.

Check out our dedicated guide on Best forex trading platforms.

What to Avoid When Choosing a Forex Broker?

Here is a quick rundown of what traders must avoid:

• Unregulated brokers. Trading with an unregulated broker exposes you to a higher risk of fraud or unethical business practices, as they are not bound by any regulatory standards or rules. Additionally, in case of any disputes or if the broker goes bankrupt, there might be no legal recourse or compensation schemes available to recover your funds.
• Lack of client protection. Avoid brokers that cannot ensure more than two of the following: segregated funds, negative balance protection, compensation scheme, and maximum leverage for retail traders no bigger than 1:200
• Low execution quality. Try to avoid brokers that cannot ensure more than two of the following: best execution policy, regular quality execution statements, and average execution speed under 50 milliseconds.
• High spreads and commissions. Sidestep brokers with floating spreads from 1.8 pips or above on STP accounts and with round-turn commissions above $7 on ECN accounts.

How to Avoid Forex and CFD Scams?

Scammers rely on the gullibility of traders. A common tactic fraudsters employ is to promise quick and easy profits at no risk to the trader. Often scammers would use labels that closely resemble the brands of real and legitimate companies. That is why regulators like the FCA have registers where traders can read about such fraudulent companies pretending to be others.

The best and easiest way to protect yourself is to make sure you work with a trustworthy and transparent broker. You can find a comprehensive list of reliable brokers by jurisdiction here.

Another important consideration is online safety. Be cautious about where you leave your personal information. Registering your details on suspicious pop-ups that promise enormous profits could lead to your contact information landing on a scammer’s dialing list. Remember, no licensed broker would make unsolicited cold calls.

The next time you get contacted out of the blue with promises of becoming the next Warren Buffet, you must remember that you are most likely speaking to a scammer. I think that nowhere is the “if something sounds too good to be true…” saying more accurate than in the world of trading. That is why you should do your due diligence before opening an account with any broker.

Our Methodology

Here at FX Empire, we have pioneered a unique methodology for evaluating forex and CFD brokers worldwide. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive picture of a broker’s pros and cons so that our readers can make informed decisions. We understand their need to choose the best partner for their particular goals and needs.

Our team of dedicated professionals is working continuously to improve our system and keep it up-to-date with current market trends. We test each broker systematically by employing over 250 variables across nine categories:

• Trust
• Fees
• Account Types
• Tradable Instruments
• Platforms and Tools
• Deposits and Withdrawals
• Customer Support
• Research
• Education

We strive to be as objective as possible, which is why our rigorous examinations are devoid of any personal bias as much as possible. We review the licenses of all the subsidiaries of a broker and check the fine print in the Client Agreement. The reliability of a broker is further determined based on the website’s regulations, fees, and general transparency.

We collect essential information by opening a live account with a broker entity and testing its services in real time. We measure the spreads, swaps, and commissions on its most popular account type and compare our findings to the industry average. We also test the functionality of the available platforms, the number and types of tradable instruments, the reliability of customer support, and the quality of the research and educational materials.

For this guide, we only considered FINMA-regulated Swiss brokers with the most flexible and safe offerings. We scrutinized each broker’s adherence to safety regulations and assessed its maximum leverage. We measured spreads and commissions, comparing them to the industry average, and selected the brokers with the most competitive pricing.

Also, we assessed the usability of brokers’ platforms and confirmed whether they are integrated for implementing longer-term strategies, such as swing and day trading, or shorter-term, like intraday trading and scalping.

We abide by our strict guidelines for editorial integrity based on the objective standards we have set for our reviews. You can read more about our review process here.

Meet Our Writers

The team of forex and CFD analysts and editors at FXEmpire is composed of trading industry professionals and seasoned financial journalists. Our experts have been published on leading financial websites such as Investopedia and Forbes. In addition, they all have extensive trading experience.

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