The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has ordered the company named ICC Intercertus Capital Ltd., from offering CFD products to its customers in the UK.
It is a Cyprus-based company that operates under the name of EverFX and though the company as such is regulated in the UK, it has subsidiaries in other countries as well. These subsidiaries were used to draw away the consumers so that they begin trading with them though these companies are not regulated by the FCA in any manner. This, in a way, helped the company to bypass the regulations and the rules imposed by the FCA and the consumers had lost protection due to this act.
The company had been operating under the Temporary Permission Regime (TPR) which is a kind of standby scheme under which the companies operate while they wait for the full and upgraded FCA license.
Normally, companies do not try and circumvent the rules and regulations of the FCA as this license is considered one of the very important and trusted licenses anywhere in the world. Companies have to pay a lot of fees and also have to undergo enormous amount of scrutiny and documentation to get this license and hence, due to the effort involved in getting it, they would not normally risk losing it.
The EverFX company, though, had not only tried to circumvent the FCA but also had pitched risky products to its customers, applied pressure on its customers to invest additional funds, and also instructed clients on what trades it should make. These are totally against the regulations involved with an FCA license and hence the FCA has chosen to take strict action against the company and has asked the company and its subsidiaries to cease its business within the UK and also close all the trading positions and return the funds to its customers.
The FCA has, from time to time, been warning the users in general about such fraudulent practices of the various companies and also keeping the users and traders abreast of such news so that they are aware of the companies that they are dealing with and ensure that they are well-protected. The FCA, as with other regulatory bodies, believes that such continuous educative and compliance news along with regulatory cleanup activities against companies like these would help the traders to be self-aware and ensure that the financial ecosystem is kept safe from such malpractices.
