FINANCIAL TRADING FOCUS
“Regulators have ganged up like a supercharged financial
NATO, and with brute force have gone about shutting
down the businesses of every unregulated broker or
regulated broker who dares to misbehave or venture
into the unauthorized realms of other jurisdictions.”
you have made a healthy profit out of it,
a profit you intend to keep.
Readers may sense that I am
exaggerating the case to make a point,
but the scenario painted above is not far
from the reality, I kid you not. Online
brokers originating from an unregulated
environment, where dormant clients’
cash was widely considered a limitless
pool for marketing expenditure, could
only anecdotally follow regulations
and respect the financial regulatory
authorities’ procedures.
The regulation tide however has turned
and it is stimulating a tsunami of change
and regulatory obedience across the
industry, given recent and not-so-recent
events involving companies such as
CWM, Plus 500, Iron FX, MF Global and
many others. A lack of compliant AML
procedures and safeguarding of clients’
funds has become a criminal offence, and
no longer is an administrative slap-on-thehand-fine going to save the day. Risking
it out may mean total annihilation of
customer deposits and irreparable damage
of your online brand, as recently witnessed
first-hand by many OBIPOs.
The regulators have ganged up like a
supercharged financial NATO, and with
brute force have gone about shutting down
the businesses of every unregulated broker
or regulated broker who dares to misbehave
or venture into the unauthorized realms of
other jurisdictions. While we should not
underestimate the power of the Internet
that lies in favour of the OBIPOs, it is
equally naïve to disregard the speed and
power of the exchange of information
between regulators, banks, third-party
databases such as World Check, World
Compliance, Dow Jones and payment
se