Licences and what they cover
Is Deriv legit?
Deriv is a licensed broker operating since 1999 through seven separate companies — one inside the EU under Malta's MFSA, the rest registered offshore. Which one holds your account decides what “regulated” means for you, and the company publishes that 74% of its retail investor accounts lose money.
Checked against Deriv's own pages
Who exactly you would be dealing with
Deriv Investments (Europe) Limited, company number C 70156, is regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority under the Investment Services Act and serves clients across the EU through passporting. Alongside it sit Deriv (FX) Ltd under the Labuan Financial Services Authority, Deriv (BVI) Ltd under the British Virgin Islands FSC, Deriv (V) Ltd under the Vanuatu FSC, Deriv (Mauritius) Ltd as an Investment Dealer, Deriv Investments (Cayman) Limited and Deriv (SVG) LLC.
That is a normal structure for this industry and it is published openly on Deriv's own regulatory page. What it means practically is that the answer to “is it regulated” depends on which company your account is opened with — the Maltese entity carries EU investor protection, the offshore ones do not.
The check to run is the same as for any broker: find the entity named in your client agreement, look up the licence number in that regulator's register, and confirm the status is current.
What the company publishes about itself
Its own risk warning: 74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with Deriv. That figure is required by European rules and recalculated quarterly, and it is the most reliable number on any broker's site.
Its instruments include Derived Indices that exist nowhere else, generated by Deriv rather than traded on a market — which makes it both a genuinely distinctive broker and one where the usual external price check does not exist. That trade-off is set out on our synthetic indices page.
What it does not publish as a single figure is a minimum deposit or a headline spread, which is unusual among the brokers we track and is noted on the relevant pages rather than smoothed over.
Reading complaints sensibly
Most complaints about any broker fall into three groups: losing money on trades, which is what the 74% figure describes and is not misconduct; withdrawal friction, which usually turns out to be verification or a method mismatch; and genuine disputes, which are what a regulator exists for.
Sorting a review into the right group before drawing a conclusion is most of the work. Our page on forex scams sets out what actual fraud looks like — an unlicensed operator, a platform found through social media, a demand for payment to release a withdrawal — none of which describes a licensed broker with a published entity list.
Questions people ask
Is Deriv a legitimate broker?
It is licensed, and it has operated since 1999 through seven companies — one regulated by Malta's MFSA inside the EU and six registered offshore. Which one holds your account determines the protection you actually have.
Is Deriv regulated?
Deriv Investments (Europe) Limited, company number C 70156, is regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority. The Labuan, BVI, Vanuatu, Mauritius, Cayman and St Vincent entities are registered in their own jurisdictions, without an EU-equivalent compensation scheme.
How many Deriv clients lose money?
Deriv publishes that 74% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with it. The figure is required by European regulators, recalculated quarterly, and comparable with other brokers' disclosures — which run from about 69% to 83%.
How do I check which Deriv entity holds my account?
It is named on the account opening page and in the client agreement. Look up the licence number in that regulator's register and confirm the status — the Maltese entity is the one carrying EU protections.
The broker itself is reviewed on our Deriv page, its instruments on synthetic indices, and the entity question across all nine brokers on regulated forex brokers.