How to check a broker or investment firm
This firm does not maintain a warning list of its own and will not tell you that a company is fraudulent. What this page does is show you where the authoritative registers are and how to read them.
Look a firm up on the official registers
Enter what you know. This does not search any database of ours — it assembles the official sources and tells you what to look for on each of them.
This preliminary check is for informational purposes only and does not determine whether a company is fraudulent. Nothing you type here is transmitted or stored.
The two things to look for
1. Is the firm authorized — for what it actually offered you?
Authorization is not a single status. A register entry sets out the specific activities a firm is permitted to carry on. A company licensed for corporate advisory work is not thereby permitted to take retail deposits; one licensed to arrange investments may not be permitted to hold client money. Read the permissions, not just the presence of an entry.
Check the register of the country where you live, not only the one the firm names. Most regulators require authorization to solicit their own residents regardless of where a firm is incorporated.
2. Does the website address match?
This is the check almost nobody does, and it is the one that most often settles the question. Several regulators publish the authorized firm’s own web address alongside its registration number. Where the site you actually used sits on a different domain from the one the register lists, the near-certain explanation is a clone: someone has taken a genuine firm’s name and number and attached them to a website that firm does not control.
The same applies to the telephone number, the email domain and the registered address. Fraudulent operations copy the credentials because they are public; they cannot copy the contact details, because the register carries the real ones.
What an entry does not tell you
- The absence of a warning is not a clearance. Warning lists are published after complaints are received and assessed. A firm that is not on one today may be on one next month.
- A company registration is not a financial license. Incorporating a company is administrative; being permitted to take investments is a separate regulatory permission.
- An entry can be historic. Check the dates, and check whether permissions have been withdrawn or varied.
- A license in one jurisdiction is not a license everywhere. Offshore authorizations in particular frequently do not permit solicitation of residents elsewhere.
Where to check
Use the official regulator’s own website, reached by a search you run yourself — never a link sent to you. Cloned regulator websites exist, and they are convincing.
- United States — FINRA BrokerCheck; the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure; the NFA’s BASIC system for futures and forex; the CFTC’s RED List of unregistered foreign entities; and your state securities regulator.
- United Kingdom — the FCA’s Financial Services Register, and the FCA Warning List.
- European Union — the national regulator of the member state concerned, together with ESMA’s published warnings.
- Australia — ASIC Connect and ASIC’s investor warnings.
- International — the IOSCO Investor Alerts Portal, which aggregates alerts published by member regulators worldwide.
Where a firm claims authorization in a jurisdiction not listed above, the regulator’s own register is still the right source. If you cannot find the regulator, or the regulator has no searchable register, treat that as an answer in itself.
Checked the register and it does not add up?
Send us what you found. A mismatch between a register entry and the site you used is frequently the fact a whole matter turns on.
Confidential. No obligation. Contacting the firm does not create an attorney‑client relationship.