ASIC regulated forex brokers

Our nine against the Australian register

This is our nine-broker list checked against the Australian register, not a ranking of every AFSL holder — there are far more of those. A No in the second column means the broker is regulated elsewhere, not that it is unregulated.

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Entities and licence numbers are as each broker publishes them, read on 24 August 2026; the leverage caps, the intervention order and the compensation scheme's scope come from ASIC and AFCA directly.

What an ASIC licence changes about a CFD account

Since 29 March 2021 ASIC's product intervention order has capped the leverage a CFD provider may offer retail clients at 30:1 for major currency pairs, sliding down to 2:1 depending on the asset class. Before it, ASIC notes, a retail investor's exposure could be as much as 500 times their original outlay — which is still what offshore entities of the same brands offer today.

The order does three more things that matter as much as the leverage cap: it standardises margin close-out, it requires protection against negative account balances, and it prohibits providers from giving inducements to become a client or to trade. That last one is why bonus offers do not appear on Australian accounts.

ASIC extended the order in April 2022 for five years, to 23 May 2027, after reporting that retail client losses fell sharply in its first quarter of operation — net losses of $22 million against a quarterly average of $372 million in the year before.

The gap: Australia has no compensation fund for CFD clients

This is where ASIC differs from the FCA and CySEC, and where most comparison pages simply say “tier-1 regulator” and move on. The UK's FSCS pays up to £85,000 per person per firm and Cyprus's Investor Compensation Fund up to €20,000. Australia's equivalent, the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort, pays up to $150,000 — but only on unpaid AFCA determinations in four areas: personal financial advice, credit intermediation, securities dealing and credit provision.

A retail client of a failed CFD issuer is not in those four areas. What Australia gives instead is a free dispute-resolution body, AFCA, whose determinations bind the firm while it is solvent, plus an active enforcement record: in January 2026 ASIC reported securing nearly $40 million in refunds after finding the CFD sector falling short of its obligations.

So ASIC regulation is strong on conduct and thin on insolvency. That is a real trade-off rather than a ranking — and it is the opposite shape to an offshore licence, which is thin on both.

One of our nine holds an AFSL

Fort Securities Australia Pty Ltd, AFSL 493520, is ForTrade's Australian company, and its own site notes that what it provides is general advice only. The other eight brokers we track are licensed elsewhere: three hold UK FCA authorisations, four hold CySEC licences, one is under Malta's MFSA, and several run offshore companies in Belize, the Comoros, Seychelles, Mauritius or St Vincent alongside them.

That makes this page a check rather than a ranking. Comparison sites listing ten or thirty ASIC brokers are covering the whole Australian market; we cover the brokers on our own list, and on that list the Australian answer is one name. If you want an Australian account specifically, that is a reason to look beyond this list rather than to pick from it.

Checking an AFSL number

Australian licences are AFSL numbers — six digits, like 493520 — and ASIC publishes a professional register you can search by number or company name. The entry names the licensee, the authorisations it holds and the status.

Two checks matter more than the number itself. First, that the licensee's name is the company on your client agreement, not a related company with a similar name — the same trap as everywhere else in this industry. Second, that the licence authorises dealing in derivatives for retail clients rather than only wholesale ones, because a wholesale-only authorisation means the retail protections above do not apply to you at all.

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