Exness review

Exness (UK) Ltd is authorised by the FCA, and every permission on that authorisation is limited to Professional and Eligible Counterparty clients. Retail is not on the licence. A retail client of the brand is contracting with a different company in a different jurisdiction.

Last verified 19 August 2026 · how we check

“FCA regulated” is true of Exness, and it does not mean what a retail trader reading it would assume. The detail is in the permissions rather than the headline, and it is public.

What the FCA register actually shows

Exness (UK) Ltd, FRN 730729, Authorised, effective 1 September 2016, Companies House number 08861481. Five regulated activities are listed. We read the customer type on each one:

Retail appears nowhere. Not restricted, not conditional; absent. The UK company is not permitted to deal with retail clients at all, and the register says so in a field anyone can open.

For contrast, the same register lists Pepperstone Limited (FRN 684312) with “Retail (Investment), Professional” on the equivalent permissions. The field exists, it is filled in differently for different firms, and it is the field that decides whether the licence is about you.

The rest of the register entry

<text x="264" y="80">CySEC 178/12</text>
<text x="264" y="102">EU clients</text>
<text x="264" y="126" fill="#767676">FCA: no longer authorised</text>
<text x="264" y="146" fill="#767676">ICF applies</text>

<text x="486" y="80" fill="#e00025">a company outside</text>
<text x="486" y="100" fill="#e00025">the UK and the EU</text>
<text x="486" y="126" fill="#e00025">no FSCS</text>
<text x="486" y="146" fill="#e00025">no ICF</text>

Why a firm holds a licence it cannot sell under

This is a legitimate and common structure, not a trick. A professional-only permission lets a group keep a UK presence, deal with institutional counterparties, and describe itself accurately as FCA authorised. Retail business then runs through entities licensed elsewhere or nowhere.

The problem is not the structure. It is that “regulated by the FCA” in a marketing headline and “authorised to take you as a client” are different statements, and only the register distinguishes them.

The leverage tells you which company you are in

Exness is known for very high, in places uncapped, leverage. No UK, EU or Australian licence permits anything of the sort; the caps are in leverage limits by regulator. An account offering hundreds to one is by definition not the UK company and not the Cyprus company.

The $10 minimum deposit is not the issue on its own, and a low floor is a fair way to test a platform. It is a marker of which entity is serving you.

What to establish before funding

Open the client agreement and find the company name. That is your counterparty, and it is usually not the one in the “regulated by” line.

Look up that company, not the brand. The FCA register is free and takes a minute, and the customer type field is the one that matters.

Ask what compensation scheme applies to your entity. FSCS covers UK-authorised firms for eligible claimants; the Cyprus ICF covers CySEC firms; outside those, usually nothing.

What we checked, and what we didn’t

We read the FCA register entry for FRN 730729 including the customer type on all five permissions, checked the CySEC and ASIC registers we hold locally, and read the firm’s own regulation page, all on 19 August 2026.

We have not opened an account, deposited money, or tested spreads, execution or withdrawals. Nothing here is a claim about how Exness treats its clients. It is a statement about which company would be treating them, and which rulebook that company sits under.

Sources

• FCA — Financial Services Register, FRN 730729
• CySEC — register of Cypriot investment firms
• Exness — regulation page
• ASIC Financial Services Licensee Register