AMF Updates its List of Binary Options and Forex Providers to be Avoided

As part of its efforts to combat the phenomenon of unregulated forex and binary options brokers who are targeting the lucrative French market, France’s national financial markets regulator, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), has since late 2013 adopted the policy of periodically issuing comprehensive lists of firms which do not possess the correct license to solicit French clients.

The new and updated version of these two lists, one for binary options brokers and one for forex brokers, containing in both cases the names of websites which “offer binary options trading, for which no authorized investment services provider could be clearly identified,” was released a couple of days ago and what is remarkable to observe, when compared to the previous lists, which were out in early July 2014 is the steep increase in the numbers of unlicensed brokers contained herein. More specifically in July the lists contained 32 unregulated forex brokers and 77 unregulated binary options brokers, while the current lists feature 45 unregulated forex brokers and a stunning 122 binary options brokers.

This increase is indicative of the situation, especially prevalent in the binary options industry, where many providers remain undeterred and continue to enter the market without regulation or oversight. This phenomenon is perhaps the result of two factors. The first is the inability of national regulators to do much more in terms of combating this trend than issuing warnings against the firms they manage to identify and urging the public to avoid them and only trade through regulated brokers in each jurisdiction. However, the frailties of the global regulatory system, the absence of real coherence and streamlining and the fact that operating an online brokerage is easy to do while be based in obscure offshore locations where no regulation or control whatsoever is in place, make it possible for unlicensed brokers to emerge and even to flourish.

The second reason is that traders, especially those engaged in binary options trading, seem to be comfortable to trade with unregulated brokers and take on the increased risks perhaps hoping to achieve increased profits. This work both ways, since it allows brokers to decide not to apply for regulatory licenses avoid the associated financial and procedural cost, since they keep finding clients willing to join them even without the safety net of regulation.

However, unless significant changes come into effect as regards the global regulation of such financial services, it seems that local watchdogs will stick to the practice of issuing warnings, with the hope that investors will pay attention to such announcements and act accordingly.

Faithful to this common practice the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), a provincial regulator which oversees all non-bank financial markets activity in the province of Canada which is home to Toronto, North America’s third largest financial center, has recently published a warning to potential investors regarding OTC binary options firm Markets The World Ltd, trading as MarketsWorld, which operates from the website www.marketsworld.com and purports to be based in the British territory of the Isle of Man.

Specifically, the OSC warning states that Markets The World Ltd is not registered to engage in the business of trading in securities or advising anyone with respect to investing in, buying or selling securities in Ontario.

Because we have repeatedly stressed on binaryoptionswire.com that we do favour and recommend regulated, licensed brokers for conducting all online, retail, trading transactions, and for the convenience of our readers, below are the entire lists of unregulated binary options brokers and unregulated forex brokers, as published by the AMF :

Unregulated binary options brokers:

Unregulated forex brokers: