On Nov 3, 2020, the Cyprus-registered Praxis Cashier System Ltd (Praxis Cashier) of Amit Klachko announced the acquisition of IC Markets (www.icmarkets.com) as a new Forex and CFD client. IC Markets is a globally operating regulated broker scheme established by Andrew Budzinski in Australia in 2007. Its different entities are regulated by Australian ASIC, Cyprus CySEC, and FSA Seychelles.
IC Markets in a nutshell
Let’s start this short IC Markets introduction with it’s Wikipedia entry. According to Wikipedia, IC Markets was founded in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, Andrew Budzinski (LinkedIn profile) and received an Australian Financial Services License from ASIC. In June 2018, IC Markets announced record average daily volumes (ADV) of US$19.4 billion in May and a monthly total of US$447 billion. No numbers of the IC Markets scheme for 2019 and 2020 have been provided so far.
- IC Markets AU: The Australian market is served by International Capital Markets Pty. Ltd, registered in 2007 and in Sydney. Since 2009 this entity is regulated by ASIC with the license number 335692.
- IC Markets EU: Since June 2018, the EU market has been served by IC Markets (EU) Ltd, which is regulated by CySEC under license number 362/18. Additionally, IKBK Holdings has been registered in November 2016 in Cyprus as an operational entity of the scheme. Andrew Budzinski, born May 1975, is a director in both Cyprus entities.
- IC Markets Global: Since June 2019 the non-Aussie and non-EU activities are performed via the scheme’s Seychelles entity Raw Trading Ltd (read this Finance Magnates article). This IC Markets Global (the wold minus Australia, the EU, and some other excluded jurisdictions) is operated by Raw Trading Ltd in Seychelles and IKBK Holdings Ltd in Cyprus. Raw Trading is registered as a securities dealer with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) of Seychelles Securities with Dealer Licence No SD018.
Preliminary Conclusion
So far, the IC Markets scheme has not been on our radar. We have not received any reports of whistleblowers or victims. We have also not found any warnings from regulators. In this respect we have no indication of a scam. High risk is always present with Forex, CFD and Crypto brokers and the line between high risk and scam is often blurred.
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We would like to know more about the IC Markets scheme. If you are a customer or partner and/or have related information and experiences, we would be grateful if you would share it with our FinTelegram Research Team.
