Broker review

IC Markets review

The Australian entity holds a real ASIC licence covering retail clients, and the Cyprus entity is on the CySEC register. The global site most international clients actually land on carries an FCA warning: not authorised, published 1 October 2024 and still live.

Last verified 19 August 2026 · how we check

Verdict	caution
Regulators	ASIC, CySEC
Minimum deposit	$200
Maximum leverage	1:500 (global entity)
Platforms	MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView

IC Markets is three different things depending on which website you open, and the regulators disagree about one of them.

What the registers say

Register	Entity	Result
ASIC, 6,525 licensees	International Capital Markets Pty. Ltd.	AFSL 335692, licensed since 2 July 2009
CySEC, 248 firms	IC Markets (EU) Ltd	licence 362/18
FCA register	IC Markets (EU) Ltd	No longer authorised (FRN 827935)
FCA warning list	IC Markets Global	not authorised

The Australian licence is real and it is not narrow. Its published conditions authorise dealing, market making and advice in derivatives, foreign exchange contracts and securities, in each case “to retail and wholesale clients”. That phrase matters: we have covered brokers whose licence stops at wholesale, and this one does not.

The warning, and which site it names

The FCA’s warning list carries an entry for IC Markets Global, and it names the exact addresses:

https://www.icmarkets.com/global/en/ and https://www.ic.com/en/

First published 1 October 2024, last updated 10 August 2026. The consequence the FCA states plainly:

If you deal with this firm, you won’t have access to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you want to complain. You also won’t be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if things go wrong.

This is not a warning about a clone or an impersonator. It names the group’s own global domain, which is where clients outside Australia and the EU are routed.

<text x="256" y="62">IC Markets (EU) Ltd</text>
<text x="256" y="106">CySEC 362/18</text>
<text x="256" y="128" fill="#767676">FCA: no longer authorised</text>
<text x="256" y="150">EU clients</text>

<text x="486" y="62" fill="#e00025">icmarkets.com/global</text>
<text x="486" y="80" fill="#e00025">ic.com</text>
<text x="486" y="106" fill="#e00025">FCA: not authorised</text>
<text x="486" y="128" fill="#e00025">warning since 01/10/2024</text>
<text x="486" y="150" fill="#e00025">no FSCS, no Ombudsman</text>

Two real licences and one warned site, under one brand. Which one you get depends on the address you opened.

The left two columns are what the marketing cites. The right column is where most international clients actually sign up.

Why this matters more than the usual offshore note

Plenty of brokers run an offshore arm, and we have written that a licensed European entity sitting beside an unregulated one is ordinary industry structure, not evidence of anything. What separates this case is that a regulator has published a warning naming the specific domain, rather than the site simply being outside anyone’s remit.

The distinction is the difference between “no regulator covers this” and “a regulator looked and said avoid it.” The second is a fact you can check in a minute, and it is on the FCA’s own site.

What the licences do and do not cover

An ASIC licence protects an Australian client of the Australian entity. A CySEC licence protects an EU client of the Cyprus entity, with the ICF compensation scheme behind it. Neither follows you to the global site.

Leverage tells you which entity you are on faster than any licence page. Australian retail leverage is capped at 30:1 on major FX and EU retail at the same level, as we set out in leverage limits by regulator. An offer of 1:500 identifies the third column of the table above before you read a word of the terms.

What to establish before funding

Which entity appears in your client agreement, not on the homepage. The document names the company, and the company decides which of the three rows above applies to you.

Whether your account is with the licensed entity or the global one. If the URL you signed up through contains /global/, the FCA warning is about your account.

What compensation scheme, if any, stands behind it. ASIC has none of the FSCS kind; CySEC has the ICF; the global entity has neither, and the FCA says so.

What we checked, and what we didn’t

We read the FCA warning page directly, searched the ASIC and CySEC registers we hold locally, and read the group’s global site on 19 August 2026. We have not opened an account, deposited money, or tested execution, spreads or withdrawals.

Nothing here says the firm mishandles client money, because we have not been a client and have no evidence either way. What we can say is narrower and checkable by anyone: two real licences exist, they cover two specific companies, and a third site under the same brand carries a published regulatory warning.

Sources

Scored against the published methodology. Figures were accurate on 19 August 2026 and change frequently — confirm current terms with the provider. Not investment advice; see the risk disclaimer.