First Shanghai review.

Overview

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is our review of First Shanghai, scored 5.6 out of 10 across regulation, fees, platform, support and reviews. Our previous review of this broker scored it 4.1 out of 10; this review moves that to 5.6, and the move is our assessment based on the current evidence, not a change in the firm itself. The regulation score of 7.8 rests on four confirmed Hong Kong Hong Kong licence registry search licences held across the group, and the fees score of 3 rests on the same evidence showing no published commission schedule and no disclosed minimum deposit.

First Shanghai is not one company but a group of Hong Kong licensed entities under First Shanghai Investments Limited, itself listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under stock code 0227HK. The corporate site places the group’s founding in 1964, with the HKEX listing dating to 1972 and the First Shanghai name adopted in 1993. Trading activity runs through separately licensed subsidiaries: First Shanghai Securities Limited for dealing and advising on securities, First Shanghai Investment Management (HK) Limited for asset management, First Shanghai Futures Limited for futures dealing, and First Shanghai Capital Limited for corporate finance advisory.

What the SFC register shows for First Shanghai

We searched the Hong Kong SFC Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions directly, and before recording any result we ran a positive control search for a firm known to be listed, so an empty result would mean absence rather than a broken search. First Shanghai Securities Limited holds CE reference ABV488, licensed for Type 1, Type 4 and Type 6 (Dealing in Securities, Advising on Securities, Advising on Corporate Finance), each shown as active, with 6 licensing conditions attached and no public disciplinary action recorded. First Shanghai Investment Management (HK) Limited holds CE reference BEQ584, licensed for Type 4 and Type 9 (Advising on Securities, Asset Management), active, no disciplinary action recorded. First Shanghai Futures Limited holds CE reference AGK583, licensed for Type 2 and Type 5 (Dealing in Futures Contracts, Advising on Futures Contracts), active, no disciplinary action recorded. First Shanghai Capital Limited holds CE reference AES612, licensed for Type 6 (Advising on Corporate Finance), active, with 1 licensing condition attached and no disciplinary action recorded. The 0227 stock exchange listing number is not something we hold a register entry for at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, so that number has not been checked; that is a gap in our own directory, not a finding about the firm. We also searched 1,441 warning list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and First Shanghai appears on none of them, though this covers only the lists we mirror rather than every regulator worldwide.

What we could not confirm about First Shanghai’s costs

The regulation picture is the strongest part of this review. The fee picture is the weakest, and it is the main reason the overall score stays in the middle of the range. The earlier published review reported that commission rates and fees are not published on a schedule and require individual inquiry, and that the only itemised charge it could find was a bank wire fee described only as “bank charges” with no amount disclosed. That earlier review also reported three account tiers, a Cash Account, a Margin Account and an Institutional Account, none of which disclose a minimum deposit figure; the Margin Account’s minimum is described only as “higher” than the Cash Account’s, and the Institutional Account’s as negotiable. That earlier review also found no negative balance protection at First Shanghai: clients who trade on margin, futures or short selling stay legally on the hook for negative balances left by forced liquidations or adverse market moves.

Overview Table

Facts List

• SFC licence ABV488, held by First Shanghai Securities Limited, covers Types 1, 4 and 6 and is active subject to 6 licensing conditions.
• First Shanghai Investment Management (HK) Limited holds SFC licence BEQ584 for Types 4 and 9, active.
• First Shanghai Futures Limited holds SFC licence AGK583 for Types 2 and 5, active.
• First Shanghai Capital Limited holds SFC licence AES612 for Type 6, active, with 1 licensing condition.
• None of the four licences carries a recorded public disciplinary action on the SFC register.
• First Shanghai does not appear on any of 1,441 mirrored CySEC, FCA or FSC Mauritius warning-list entries we searched.
• Parent company First Shanghai Investments Limited has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 1972 under stock code 0227HK.
• According to the earlier review, negative balance protection is not offered at First Shanghai.
• The earlier review reported deposits are accepted in HKD only, while withdrawals are available in HKD or USD.
• The earlier review reported no demo account is available on mobile, web or desktop versions of the First Shanghai Trade platform.

Key Takeaways

First Shanghai scores 5.6 out of 10 overall, up from the 4.1 this catalogue gave it previously. That move reflects our current assessment against the evidence below, not any change at the firm: the regulation score of 7.8 is carried by four separately licensed entities confirmed active on the Hong Kong SFC register with no disciplinary action recorded against any of them, plus a clean result on our own warning-list search. The fees score of 3 is carried the other way, by a firm that discloses almost nothing about what it actually charges.

What the SFC register shows for First Shanghai

• First Shanghai Securities Limited is listed under CE reference ABV488 on the Hong Kong SFC Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions, holding licences for Type 1 (Dealing in Securities), Type 4 (Advising on Securities) and Type 6 (Advising on Corporate Finance). All three remain active, the public record shows no disciplinary action against the firm, and 6 licensing conditions apply.
• The same SFC register confirms First Shanghai Investment Management (HK) Limited under CE reference BEQ584, licensed for Type 4 and Type 9 (Asset Management), active, with no public disciplinary action recorded.
• It also confirms First Shanghai Futures Limited under CE reference AGK583, licensed for Type 2 (Dealing in Futures Contracts) and Type 5 (Advising on Futures Contracts), active, with no public disciplinary action recorded.
• And it confirms First Shanghai Capital Limited under CE reference AES612, licensed for Type 6, active, with no public disciplinary action recorded and 1 licensing condition attached.
• We hold no register entry for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, so the 0227 stock-code reference tied to First Shanghai Investments Limited has not been checked against any authority; that is a gap in our own directory, not a finding about the firm.
• We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from the CySEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius lists, running a positive control on each of the four registers we checked first, and First Shanghai appears on none of them. That result covers only the lists we mirror, not every regulator worldwide.

What First Shanghai charges

• The earlier review this rewrite draws on reported that First Shanghai does not publish a commission schedule, and that rates and fees require individual inquiry, which is why a client cannot price a trade before opening an account.
• That same earlier review reported only one disclosed fee line: bank charges apply to wire transfers, with no amount given.
• Minimum deposits are absent from the same source for two of the three account types: the Cash Account’s minimum is not disclosed, and the Margin Account’s is described only as “higher” with no figure attached; the Institutional Account’s is described as negotiable.
• Deposits are accepted in HKD only, while withdrawals can be taken in HKD or USD, per the earlier review, which creates a conversion step for anyone funding the account in another currency.
• E-wallets and credit cards are not available for either deposit or withdrawal, per the same source; the working methods reported are FPS (instant to same day), bank wire (1 to 3 days, bank charges apply) and cheque (2 to 5 days, no fee).

Platform and account terms

• The earlier review described a single platform family, First Shanghai Trade (第一上海通), spanning mobile app, web and desktop, with order types and charting scaling up from basic on mobile to advanced on desktop, and no demo mode offered on any of the three.
• The same source reported that First Shanghai offers no negative balance protection, meaning clients using margin, futures or short selling remain legally obligated to cover a negative balance from a forced liquidation or an adverse market move.
• It also reported that remote identity verification for opening an account can be completed by depositing a personal cheque of HKD 10,000 or more, an unusually large sum to tie to identity checks rather than trading activity.
• Regarding country eligibility, the earlier review noted that First Shanghai’s own legal, terms and legal-document pages were checked using an Indonesian exit node on 27 July 2026, with no restricted-country statement found; it also noted that a country list included in an earlier version of that review had no link to anything the broker actually publishes, so that list was removed. We hold no broker-published restricted-country list to confirm eligibility by jurisdiction on that basis.

Reaching First Shanghai

• The firm’s own Hong Kong contact page lists (852) 2522 2101 as the phone number, (852) 2810 6789 for fax, with the office based at 19/F Wing On House, 71 Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong.
• The earlier review reported that live chat and social media channels are not available, and that the FAQ section has limited availability in Chinese and English.
• First Shanghai’s own corporate site records the group’s history: founded in 1964, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 1972 under stock code 0227HK, and renamed First Shanghai in 1993, which is a longer public-company track record than most brokers in this catalogue carry.

Licenses & Regulation

Four Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission licences sit under the First Shanghai name, each checked against the SFC Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions. First Shanghai Securities Limited holds CE reference ABV488, licensed for Type 1, Type 4 and Type 6 (Dealing in Securities; Advising on Securities; Advising on Corporate Finance), all shown as active, with the register recording no public disciplinary action against it. That licence carries six licensing conditions; the register does not set out what they are. First Shanghai Investment Management (HK) Limited holds CE reference BEQ584 for Type 4 and Type 9 (Advising on Securities; Asset Management), also active with no disciplinary action recorded. First Shanghai Futures Limited holds CE reference AGK583 for Type 2 and Type 5 (Dealing in Futures Contracts; Advising on Futures Contracts), active, no disciplinary action recorded. First Shanghai Capital Limited holds CE reference AES612 for Type 6 (Advising on Corporate Finance), active, no disciplinary action recorded, and this licence carries one licensing condition.

What the SFC register does and doesn’t cover

We searched the SFC register four times, once for each entity, and ran a positive control against a known-listed firm first so that a clean result would mean absence and not a broken search. All four First Shanghai entities came back confirmed. The group also quotes a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing, stock code 0227, for the parent company First Shanghai Investments Limited. We hold no register entry for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, so that number has not been checked here; a stock exchange listing is in any case a public-company listing, not a financial-services authorisation, and confirming it would not tell a reader whether the entity taking their money to trade is licensed to do so. That question is answered by the four SFC entries above, not by the exchange code.

Four entities, one trading name

First Shanghai trades under one brand but operates through four separately licensed subsidiaries, each doing a different job: Securities Limited for dealing and advisory work, Investment Management for asset management, Futures Limited for futures dealing, and Capital Limited for corporate finance advisory. A client opening a securities account is contracting with First Shanghai Securities Limited under CE ABV488; a client in a managed portfolio is contracting with the Investment Management entity under BEQ584. Which entity actually holds a given client’s account matters for which licence, and which conditions, apply to that relationship.

Warning lists and what we didn’t find

We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and First Shanghai does not appear on any of them. That’s a clean result across three regulators’ alert lists, though it only covers the lists we mirror, not every regulator that publishes one.

What the register doesn’t tell a reader

The SFC register confirms that all four entities are actively licensed and that none carries a recorded public disciplinary action, but it is silent on what First Shanghai Securities Limited’s six licensing conditions actually require, and on what First Shanghai Capital Limited’s single condition requires. A reader relying on this section should treat active, no disciplinary action, conditions unspecified as the complete picture the register gives us, not as a clean bill on terms we haven’t read.

We’re scoring regulation 7.8 out of 10 here, up from an overall score of 4.1 in our previous review to 5.6 overall this time. The regulation figure is the strongest of this review’s criteria, and it rests on having four SFC entries confirmed directly against the register rather than taken on the earlier review’s word, plus the clean warning-list search across 1,441 entries. The overall move from 4.1 to 5.6 reflects this review’s own criteria and current evidence, not a change in the firm’s conduct.

How to Trade

First Shanghai’s trading business runs through a cluster of separately licensed subsidiaries rather than one entity, and which one a client actually deals with depends on the product. Securities dealing sits with First Shanghai Securities Limited, which the Hong Kong SFC Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions lists under CE reference ABV488, active for Type 1 (Dealing in Securities), Type 4 (Advising on Securities) and Type 6 (Advising on Corporate Finance), with six licensing conditions attached and no recorded disciplinary action. Futures dealing is booked through a different subsidiary, First Shanghai Futures Limited, on the same register under CE reference AGK583, active for Type 2 (Dealing in Futures Contracts) and Type 5 (Advising on Futures Contracts), also with no recorded disciplinary action. Advisory and asset management work sits with a third entity, First Shanghai Investment Management (HK) Limited, CE reference BEQ584, active for Type 4 and Type 9 (Asset Management). A fourth subsidiary, First Shanghai Capital Limited, holds CE reference AES612 for Type 6 (Advising on Corporate Finance), with one licensing condition and no recorded disciplinary action; this entity covers corporate finance advisory rather than client trading. The parent, First Shanghai Investments Limited, is separately listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under stock code 0227, but that listing is the parent’s public-company status, not a trading authorisation, and we hold no register entry for HKEX itself, so that number has not been checked against any authority record.

Markets First Shanghai offers

Our earlier review listed four asset classes available across the group. Equities cover HKEX-listed stocks, China A-shares reached through Stock Connect, US markets on the NYSE and NASDAQ, and what it described as selective international access. Futures cover index contracts including the Hang Seng and S&P 500, plus commodities, currencies and interest-rate futures, consistent with the futures dealing licence held by First Shanghai Futures Limited. The options offering does not extend beyond stock options tied to HKEX-listed names. Fixed income, by contrast, was characterised as a narrower line, spanning government securities and corporate bonds, and the earlier review noted that specifics were obtainable only by asking directly, since none were published.

How First Shanghai structures an account

The earlier review described three account tiers. A Cash Account trades without leverage, requires full payment before settlement, does not permit short selling, and carries no interest charges; no minimum deposit figure was given. A Margin Account allows leveraged trading up to regulatory limits, permits short selling through securities lending, is described as giving enhanced IPO subscription power, and charges interest on the borrowed amount; again, no specific minimum deposit was disclosed, only that it sits higher than the cash tier. An Institutional Account offers customised structures, multiple authorised traders, segregated sub-accounts and a dedicated relationship manager, with both the minimum deposit and the interest terms described as negotiable rather than fixed. Across all three, the earlier review found that commission rates and fees are not set out on any published schedule and have to be requested individually, so a prospective client cannot compare the cost of trading before opening an account.

Placing and holding a position

Trading itself runs through a single platform family, First Shanghai Trade (第一上海通), offered as a mobile app, a web platform and a desktop terminal, all in Chinese and English. The earlier review found real-time quotes and news on all three, but order types, technical indicators and charting scale up from basic on mobile to advanced on desktop; automated trading is not available on mobile or web and is described as limited even on desktop. None of the three tiers offers a demo mode, so a client cannot test order handling or the interface before funding an account.

Two rules bind a position once it is open. The earlier review reported that First Shanghai offers no negative balance protection, meaning a client using margin, futures or short selling remains legally obligated to cover a negative balance if a forced liquidation or an adverse market move takes the account below zero. It also reported that funding only moves in one direction by currency: deposits are accepted in HKD only, while withdrawals can be paid out in either HKD or USD, so a client funding from a non-HKD account carries the conversion cost of getting money in, separate from whatever spread or commission applies to the trade itself.

Account Types

First Shanghai Securities splits its client base into three tiers rather than the branded “Standard/Pro/VIP” ladder common among CFD brokers: a Cash Account, a Margin Account, and an Institutional Account. The earlier review this catalogue is rewriting reported the details below; we have not fetched the firm’s own account-opening pages to confirm the figures first hand, so what follows is restated from that earlier report rather than quoted from any document of the firm’s.

Cash Account

The earlier review described this as the base tier: standard trading with no leverage, full payment required before settlement, no short selling, and no interest charged. No minimum deposit figure was disclosed for it. This is a plain buy-and-hold securities account rather than a trading account in the leveraged sense.

Margin Account

Leveraged trading is included in the Margin Account, capped at what the earlier review termed “regulatory limits” though no specific ratio was named; the tier also brings securities lending for short selling, stronger IPO subscription capacity, and interest on borrowed funds. The earlier review gave no minimum-deposit figure for this tier either, describing it only as a “higher requirement” than the Cash Account. A separate note carried by the earlier review, which we report here because it bears directly on this account: First Shanghai offers no negative balance protection, so a client trading on margin, in futures, or short selling remains legally obligated to cover a negative balance produced by a forced liquidation or an adverse market move, rather than having losses capped at the funds deposited.

Institutional Account

The top tier is described as negotiable rather than priced: a negotiable minimum deposit, customised account structures, multiple authorised traders, segregated sub-accounts, a dedicated relationship manager, and negotiated interest rates. None of these terms carries a published number: the earlier review’s own account describes them as set by negotiation, not by a rate card.

What First Shanghai does not publish upfront

Across all three tiers, the earlier review reported that commission rates and fees are not published on a schedule and require an individual inquiry, so a prospective client cannot compare the cost of any account against a competitor before opening one. It also reported that none of the three platform tiers, mobile, web, or desktop, offers a demo mode, so there is no way to trial an account’s trading conditions with unfunded money first. One further detail the earlier review tied to account opening rather than to trading itself: remote identity verification can reportedly be completed by depositing a personal cheque of HKD 10,000 or more, which is an unusually large sum to be doing double duty as a verification step rather than a funded trading balance.

Funding an account

Whichever tier a client opens, the earlier review reported that deposits are accepted in HKD only, with withdrawals available in HKD or USD. Faster Payment System transfers were reported as processing instant to same day with fees not disclosed, bank wire as processing one to three days with bank charges applying, and cheque as processing two to five days with no fee. E-wallets and credit cards were both reported as unavailable for deposit or withdrawal on any account.

Negative Balance Protection

An earlier review of First Shanghai reported that the firm does not offer negative balance protection, and that clients remain legally obligated to cover negative balances left behind by forced liquidations or adverse market movements. We have not read the client agreement or margin terms ourselves and cannot point to a clause number for that obligation; we are restating what the earlier review found, not quoting a document of the firm’s.

Where the exposure actually sits

The account structure that earlier review described splits the risk fairly cleanly by account type. The Cash Account rules out leverage by design: full payment is required before settlement, short selling is not permitted, and no interest is charged, so a client confined to that account has less obvious room to end up owing the firm money. The Margin Account is the other end of the same firm: leveraged trading up to regulatory limits, securities lending to support short selling, and interest charged on the borrowed amount. Without negative balance protection, that combination is exactly the setup where a fast-moving market can produce a deficit a forced liquidation doesn’t fully cover, and the client is left owing the shortfall.

Futures widen the same exposure. First Shanghai Futures Limited holds SFC reference AGK583, confirmed active on the SFC register for Type 2, Dealing in Futures Contracts, and the instrument list carried by the earlier review includes index futures on the Hang Seng and S&P 500 alongside commodities, currencies and interest rate futures. Futures are margined and can gap through a stop; a firm without stated negative balance protection is a firm where that gap becomes the client’s debt, not just a lost deposit.

What the SFC register does and doesn’t tell us

We checked the Hong Kong SFC Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions directly. First Shanghai Securities Limited (CE reference ABV488) is licensed for Type 1, Type 4 and Type 6, all shown active, with no public disciplinary action recorded against it, and the licence carries six licensing conditions. The register itemizes those six conditions: a restriction on acting as sponsor for Type 6 regulated activity, a restriction on acting as a takeovers adviser, a requirement to provide virtual asset dealing services only through an omnibus account, a Type 1 client requirement specific to virtual asset services, further terms governing virtual asset dealing, and custodian requirements applicable in respect of open-ended fund companies; none of them are client-money or deficit-related terms. First Shanghai Investment Management (HK) Limited (BEQ584, Type 4 and Type 9) and First Shanghai Futures Limited (AGK583, Type 2) both show the same clean disciplinary record with no equivalent detail on conditions. None of the four SFC entries we checked carries a public marker specific to negative balance handling, because that isn’t the kind of thing the register records.

What First Shanghai does not publish

The earlier review also reported that commission rates and fees are not published on a schedule and require individual inquiry, and that bank wire transfers carry a fee described only as “bank charges” with no figure attached. Neither of those fills in how a margin call or a forced liquidation is actually priced or timed before a shortfall crystallizes; we simply don’t have that document. A client relying on the Margin Account or trading futures through First Shanghai has, from what’s available to us, no published account of the mechanics that turn a losing position into a debt, only the fact that the debt is theirs to cover.

Set against the Institutional Account

The Institutional Account the earlier review described sits apart from this: negotiable minimum deposit, negotiated interest, segregated sub-accounts and dedicated relationship management. None of the material we have says whether negative balance terms are negotiated differently for that tier, so we’re not going to guess; it’s listed here only because it’s the one account type where the standard Margin Account terms are explicitly described as customizable rather than fixed.

Trading Instruments

First Shanghai’s group structure carries four separate SFC licences, and the licensing conditions attached to two of them run straight into what gets traded. First Shanghai Securities Limited holds CE reference ABV488 on the SFC register for Type 1 (Dealing in Securities), Type 4 (Advising on Securities) and Type 6 (Advising on Corporate Finance), and that licence carries 6 licensing conditions. First Shanghai Capital Limited holds AES612 for Type 6 (Advising on Corporate Finance), carrying 1 licensing condition. The register does publish what these conditions restrict: one of the conditions on ABV488 states that for Type 6 regulated activity, with effect from 1 January 2007, the licensee shall not act as sponsor in respect of an application for the listing on a recognized stock market of any securities. The assets described below are still what the earlier review reported the firm offers, not a list checked against the conditions themselves.

What First Shanghai lists as tradable

The earlier review this section draws on describes four asset classes. Equities cover HKEX-listed stocks, China A-shares reached through Stock Connect, US markets on the NYSE and NASDAQ, and “selective international” access, with no further detail on which other markets qualify. Futures cover index contracts on the Hang Seng and S&P 500, plus commodities, currencies and interest rates, consistent with the futures dealing licence (AGK583, Type 2) held by First Shanghai Futures Limited and confirmed active with no disciplinary record on the SFC register. For options, the only product on offer is stock options tied to HKEX-listed securities. The fixed income side is thin by comparison: government securities and corporate bonds are on the list, but the earlier review could only confirm further detail by direct inquiry.

Two account types, two different exposures

The earlier review describes a Cash Account and a Margin Account as the two standard routes into these markets, plus a negotiable Institutional Account. Under the Cash Account, clients trade without leverage: settlement requires payment in full up front, and short selling isn’t available. The Margin Account allows leveraged trading up to regulatory limits, securities lending for short selling, and enhanced IPO subscription power, with interest charged on the borrowed amount. Neither account’s minimum deposit is disclosed in what the earlier review captured; the Margin Account’s is described only as “higher” than the Cash Account’s, with no figure given.

The asset mix widens meaningfully once a client moves from Cash to Margin, since short selling and leveraged futures both depend on the margin facility, and that is also where the risk profile changes: the earlier review reports that First Shanghai offers no negative balance protection, so a client trading futures, options or short positions on margin remains legally obligated to cover a negative balance if a forced liquidation or an adverse move wipes out their equity. That exposure sits on the leveraged and short-selling instruments specifically, not on the plain Cash Account holdings.

What is not confirmed by anything we checked

None of the four instrument categories, the account minimums, or the fixed income detail come from a page we fetched ourselves; all of it is restated from the earlier published review, not verified against a First Shanghai document in this pass. The SFC register confirms the dealing and advisory licences that would permit this activity but does not itself list an instrument catalogue, a minimum deposit, or a margin rate. A listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under stock code 0227, cited in the earlier review, is First Shanghai’s own public listing as a company and has no bearing on what its licensed subsidiaries let clients trade; we hold no register entry for HKEX itself, so that number is unchecked as an authorisation and should be read only as a stock ticker.

Education & Analysis

First Shanghai Trade across three surfaces

First Shanghai runs its trading technology under one branded platform, First Shanghai Trade (第一上海通). Our earlier review describes it as available in three forms: a mobile app, a web platform and a desktop terminal, rather than as three separate products. All three carry real-time quotes and news, so a client checking a price on the phone and confirming it on the desktop terminal should be looking at the same feed rather than a stripped-down mobile version.

Where the three surfaces diverge is depth. The earlier review reported that order types, technical indicators and charting tools scale up as a client moves from mobile to desktop: the phone app carries the basics, and the fuller set of indicators and order tools sits on the desktop terminal. That is a common enough shape for a Hong Kong securities house built around a Cash and Margin account structure rather than around retail CFD trading, but it does mean a client who only ever opens the app is working with a thinner charting toolkit than the one the platform is capable of showing on desktop.

Automation and the gaps First Shanghai leaves in place

Automated trading is not uniform across the platform either. The earlier review reported that neither the mobile app nor the web platform supports automated trading at all, and that the desktop terminal supports it only in a limited form. Clients who want to run their own strategies or connect algorithmic tools are working against a platform that was not built with that as a priority.

The platform is offered in Chinese and English only, per the earlier review, which narrows who can use the interface and its documentation comfortably to those two languages. More notably, the earlier review reported that no demo account exists on any of the three surfaces, mobile, web or desktop. That means a prospective client cannot trial the order flow, the charting layout or the platform’s handling of a Margin or Institutional account before funding one, which is a real limitation set against the platform score of 6 out of 10 this review assigns.

We have not fetched First Shanghai’s own platform or product pages directly; everything in this section is restated from the earlier published review rather than confirmed against the firm’s current site, and none of it should be read as a quote from First Shanghai’s own materials.

Special Offers

First Shanghai does not publish a promotions page, a welcome bonus, a deposit match, or a referral scheme anywhere in the material this review draws on. That is not the same as saying no such thing exists; it means the record available to us, most of it carried over from the earlier review of this firm rather than fetched fresh from First Shanghai’s own site, describes an account structure priced through commission and interest rather than through any promotional credit, and says nothing at all about discounts, loyalty tiers, or sign-up incentives.

What First Shanghai’s account tiers actually charge for

The earlier review’s description of First Shanghai’s account structure sets out three tiers, and none of them carries a promotional framing. The Cash Account is standard trading without leverage: full payment is required before settlement, short selling is not permitted, and no interest is charged. The Margin Account allows leveraged trading up to regulatory limits, adds securities lending for short selling and enhanced IPO subscription power, and charges interest on the amount borrowed. The Institutional Account is described as negotiable: customised structures, multiple authorised traders, segregated sub-accounts, a dedicated relationship manager, and interest terms set by negotiation rather than a published rate. None of these three descriptions mentions a bonus, a cashback arrangement, or a fee waiver tied to opening or funding the account; they read as a plain commission-and-interest ladder, not an offers structure.

Costs that stand in for a fee schedule

The earlier review also reported that First Shanghai does not publish a commission schedule; rates require individual inquiry, which means a prospective client cannot compare the cost of trading against a competitor before opening an account, let alone check whether a “discount” applied to them is actually a discount. The one cost figure carried over is a bank wire transfer fee described only as “bank charges,” with the exact amount left undisclosed. Set against that: the earlier review’s payment-method breakdown lists cheque deposits and withdrawals as carrying no fee, and Faster Payment System (FPS) transfers as processing instantly to same day with no fee figure given either way. E-wallets and credit cards are reported as unavailable for both deposit and withdrawal. None of these payment terms is framed as a promotion; they read as the ordinary cost of moving money, undisclosed in the one case where a charge is confirmed to exist.

The one unusual condition attached to opening an account

The single account-opening condition worth flagging under this heading is not a discount but its opposite: the earlier review reported that remote identity verification can be completed by depositing a personal cheque of HKD 10,000 or more. That figure is tied to identity verification, not to trading activity or to any tiered bonus, and it is a materially larger sum than a client shopping for a low-minimum account might expect to commit before they have even started trading. Nothing in the material available to us describes a smaller verification route, a fee-free trial period, or a demo account that would let a prospective client test the platform before committing that sum; the earlier review specifically noted that no demo mode exists on the mobile, web, or desktop versions of the First Shanghai Trade platform.

What the warning-list check adds, and its limit

Separately from account terms, we searched 1441 warning-list entries mirrored from the CYSEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius registers, and First Shanghai does not appear on any of them. That is a genuine clean result, run against a positive control so an empty match means absence rather than a broken search, but it covers only the three regulators we mirror; it says nothing about whether any other authority has issued a warning, and it has no bearing on whether First Shanghai runs promotional offers of any kind. On the narrower question this section is meant to answer, the honest position is that the record we hold simply does not describe one.

Opening an Account

First Shanghai does not publish a step-by-step account-opening walkthrough in the material we reviewed, so what follows is built from the account structure, the verification method and the funding rules the earlier review recorded, plus what the Hong Kong SFC Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions confirms about the entity a client would actually be signing with. The register shows First Shanghai Securities Limited holding CE reference ABV488, licensed for Type 1, Type 4 and Type 6 activity (dealing in securities, advising on securities, advising on corporate finance), all three shown as active, with six licensing conditions attached to the licence and no public disciplinary action recorded against it.

The three account tiers First Shanghai offers

An earlier review of the firm, which we are restating here rather than quoting, described three tiers. A Cash Account trades without leverage, requires full payment before settlement, does not permit short selling, and carries no interest charges; the minimum deposit for it was not disclosed. A Margin Account allows leveraged trading up to regulatory limits, permits securities lending for short selling, adds enhanced IPO subscription power, and charges interest on borrowed amounts; its minimum deposit was described only as a higher requirement than the Cash Account, with no figure given. An Institutional Account is built around negotiable terms: customised structures, multiple authorised traders, segregated sub-accounts, a dedicated relationship manager and negotiated interest, with its minimum deposit likewise negotiable rather than fixed. None of the three tiers comes with a published minimum-deposit figure, which matches the same review’s account of First Shanghai’s commission rates and fees: they are not set out on a schedule and require individual inquiry before a prospective client can compare costs against another broker.

Verifying identity to open a First Shanghai account

The earlier review reported an unusual route into remote identity verification: it can be completed by depositing a personal cheque of HKD 10,000 or more. That ties verification to a specific sum of money changing hands up front, rather than to a document check completed before any funds move, which is worth flagging to anyone expecting to verify identity before committing capital. The same review found no live chat and no social media channel through which to ask about the process before starting it; a prospective client’s practical options for pre-application questions are the phone line and fax number the firm’s own Hong Kong contact page lists, (852) 2522 2101 and (852) 2810 6789, or its Wing On House address at 71 Des Voeux Road Central.

Funding currency and what it means for opening an account

Deposits are accepted in HKD only, while withdrawals can be paid out in either HKD or USD, according to the earlier review’s account of the firm’s payment methods across FPS, bank wire and cheque. E-wallets and credit cards are not available for either deposit or withdrawal on any of those methods. A client funding the account from outside Hong Kong, or without an HKD-denominated source of funds, is therefore looking at a currency conversion step before the first deposit lands, since no non-HKD deposit route was recorded. Bank wire deposits and withdrawals also carry bank charges that the earlier review could not put a figure to; cheque processing was recorded as taking two to five days with no fee, and FPS as instant to same day with its own fees undisclosed.

Restrictions on who may open an account

We checked First Shanghai’s own legal, terms and legal-documents pages directly, using an Indonesian exit point, on 27 July 2026, and none of them carried a statement restricting account opening by country. An earlier version of this review had included a list of restricted countries; that list could not be tied to anything the broker actually publishes, so we removed it rather than repeat an unsourced claim. That leaves no broker-published restricted-country list to check a prospective client’s jurisdiction against, one way or the other. Separately, an earlier review reported that First Shanghai offers no negative balance protection, meaning a client who opens a Margin Account, a futures account or takes on short selling remains legally obligated to cover any negative balance created by a forced liquidation or an adverse market move, a point worth weighing before choosing a leveraged tier over the Cash Account. The same review found no demo account on any of the mobile, web or desktop platforms, so there is no way to trial the trading environment before an account is funded.

Deposits & Withdrawals

First Shanghai moves client money through three rails: Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System (FPS), bank wire, and cheque. Deposits go in only in Hong Kong dollars, while withdrawals can come out in either HKD or USD, as the earlier review of this firm reported. A client funding the account from a non-HKD source is converting currency at least once before the money reaches First Shanghai, and again if a USD withdrawal gets converted back on the receiving end.

Getting money into a First Shanghai account

Per the earlier review, FPS deposits post instant to same day and the fee for the transfer is not disclosed. Bank wire deposits take one to three days by the same account, and bank charges apply on top with no figure given for how much. Cheque deposits take two to five days and carry no fee, again per that review. Neither e-wallets nor credit cards are offered for funding at all, per the same source.

The earlier review also reported that a client opening an account remotely can satisfy identity verification by depositing a personal cheque of HKD 10,000 or more, a sum tied to the verification step itself rather than to any minimum trading balance.

Three account tiers sit behind that funding, per the earlier review. The Cash Account carries no minimum deposit figure and no interest charges, but requires full payment before settlement and does not permit short selling. The Margin Account carries what that review called a higher requirement without stating the number, adds interest charged on borrowed amounts, and unlocks securities lending for short selling and enhanced IPO subscription power. The Institutional Account has a minimum described only as negotiable, with interest also negotiated case by case. None of the three figures is a published number a prospective client could check before deciding how much to send.

Getting money out of First Shanghai

Withdrawals run through the same three rails and land in HKD or USD, per the earlier review. Cheque withdrawals take two to five days and carry no fee. Bank wire withdrawals take one to three days and carry bank charges, again with no amount stated. FPS withdrawal fees are not disclosed. As with deposits, e-wallets and credit cards are not available for withdrawal.

What First Shanghai leaves undisclosed

The earlier review reported that commission rates and fees are not set out on any published schedule and have to be requested individually from First Shanghai. Combined with the undisclosed bank wire charge, the undisclosed FPS fee, and three account minimums none of which carries a published figure, a client cannot price a full funding cycle before opening an account. The same review reported that First Shanghai offers no negative balance protection, so a client trading on margin, in futures, or short selling stock remains on the hook to cover a shortfall from a forced liquidation or an adverse market move, out of pocket, on top of whatever the deposit and withdrawal rails have already taken in bank charges.

This review scores First Shanghai 5.6 out of 10 overall, up from the 4.1 we gave it previously. The fees criterion, most relevant to this section, sits at 3 out of 10, reflecting the bank wire charge with no stated amount, the undisclosed FPS fee, account minimums that are not published, and a commission schedule available only on request. That sits alongside a regulation score of 7.8, built on four confirmed Hong Kong SFC licences across the group’s securities, futures, asset management and corporate finance entities, each shown active with no recorded disciplinary action. The change in the overall figure reflects this review’s own criteria and the evidence gathered now, not any change on First Shanghai’s part.

Customer Support

First Shanghai’s own Hong Kong contact page lists a single phone line and a fax number for the firm, alongside its Central district office address. There is no separate client-service phone line, email address or ticketing system named on that page: the only channels it gives are the general phone number, the fax number and the postal address.

How to reach First Shanghai

The firm’s Hong Kong contact page gives (852) 2522 2101 as the phone number and (852) 2810 6789 as the fax number, with the office listed at 19/F Wing On House, 71 Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong. No stated operating hours accompany either number on that page, so a client calling outside Hong Kong office hours has no published guidance on when the line is staffed.

No live chat, no social media, a thin FAQ

An earlier review of this firm found no live chat option on the site and no social media presence for the firm, and described the FAQ section as limited in scope and available only in Chinese and English. We have not independently re-verified those three points on the firm’s current pages, so they carry over from that earlier write-up rather than from anything we fetched ourselves. Taken together with the contact page, they point to a support setup built around phone and fax rather than the chat widgets or ticketing portals common at retail-facing brokers.

The one email address we found is not for clients

A separate page in First Shanghai’s contact section, aimed at a Taiwan audience, publishes an email address, hr@firstshanghai.com.hk. That address is labelled for recruitment, not client support, so a client with a complaint or a service question has no firm-published email to write to among the pages we checked. Phone and fax remain the only direct channels the firm itself puts in front of visitors.

What we could not find

Nothing in the pages we fetched sets out a complaints procedure, an escalation path, a service-level commitment on response times, or any clause telling a client what happens if a dispute with support goes unresolved. We hold no evidence either way on whether such terms exist elsewhere in the firm’s account documentation; we simply did not fetch a page that states them. A client weighing this firm against one that publishes a written complaints policy is comparing a firm that discloses that process against one where, on the record we hold, it is not published.

Prohibited Countries

Checking First Shanghai’s legal, terms and legal-documents pages via an Indonesian exit node on 27 July 2026 turned up no statement restricting particular countries. An earlier version of this review carried a list of prohibited countries; we could not tie that list to anything the firm actually publishes, so we have dropped it rather than repeat a claim we cannot source. What follows is what the evidence does show about who can practically use this broker, not a jurisdiction list, because no such list exists on the pages we fetched.

What First Shanghai’s own pages say about eligibility

Nothing in the pages we checked names excluded countries. That silence is not a finding that all countries are welcome; it is a record of what we did and did not find on the firm’s site on the date we checked it.

The currency barrier that functions like a restriction

Our earlier review reported that First Shanghai accepts deposits in HKD only, across FPS, bank wire and cheque, while withdrawals can be paid out in either HKD or USD. That is not a published prohibition on any country, but it is a real practical barrier: a client without a way to fund an account in Hong Kong dollars faces currency-conversion friction before they can trade at all, regardless of where they live.

What the SFC register shows about First Shanghai’s licences

Searched directly, the Hong Kong SFC Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions confirms four entities in the group hold active licences: First Shanghai Securities Limited (CE reference ABV488, licensed for Type 1, Type 4 and Type 6), First Shanghai Investment Management (HK) Limited (CE reference BEQ584, Type 4 and Type 9), First Shanghai Futures Limited (CE reference AGK583, Type 2 and Type 5), and First Shanghai Capital Limited (CE reference AES612, Type 6). None of the four carries a public disciplinary action on the register. The ABV488 licence carries 6 licensing conditions and the AES612 licence carries 1. The register publishes the text of these conditions; one of the ABV488 conditions states that, for Type 6 regulated activity, with effect from 1 January 2007, the licensee shall not act as sponsor in respect of an application for the listing on a recognized stock market of any securities. That condition does not touch on client location or nationality. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing referenced in the earlier review, stock code 0227, is a public-company listing rather than a financial-services authorisation, and we hold no register entry for HKEX itself, so we have not checked that number directly.

Warning-list result

We searched 1441 warning-list entries mirrored from the CySEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius blacklists and First Shanghai appears on none of them. That result covers only the three regulators we mirror, not every warning list in existence, but it is a clean result on the lists we checked.

Our previous review of First Shanghai scored 4.1 out of 10; this review scores 5.6. The move is our assessment against current evidence, not a change in the firm: the regulation score of 7.8 reflects four active SFC licences across the group, each confirmed directly on the SFC register, and a clean result across the 1441 warning-list entries we searched. The fees score of 3 reflects that First Shanghai does not publish a commission schedule and requires individual inquiry to learn its costs, which is the opposite of the country-restriction question but bears on the same point: what a prospective client from outside Hong Kong can find out before committing funds.

Conclusion

First Shanghai scores 5.6 out of 10 overall, and the number is carried almost entirely by the regulatory side of the file rather than by cost or platform. Four entities inside the group hold active Hong Kong SFC licences, the warning-list search came back clean, and that is genuinely worth something. Set against that is commission pricing that requires individual inquiry rather than appearing on a published schedule, and a platform with no demo mode on any device. The stock-exchange listing number the firm cites could not be checked, because we hold no register entry for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a gap in our directory rather than a finding about the firm.

What the SFC register shows for First Shanghai

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission register confirms four separate licences tied to the First Shanghai group. First Shanghai Securities Limited holds CE reference ABV488, licensed for Type 1, Type 4 and Type 6 (dealing in securities, advising on securities, advising on corporate finance), each shown as active and carrying six licensing conditions. First Shanghai Investment Management (HK) Limited holds BEQ584 for Type 4 and Type 9 (advising on securities, asset management). First Shanghai Futures Limited holds AGK583 for Type 2 and Type 5 (dealing in futures contracts, advising on futures contracts). First Shanghai Capital Limited holds AES612 for Type 6, with one licensing condition attached. The SFC register records no public disciplinary action against any of the four. The stock code 0227 that the firm cites for its Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing sits outside any register our review process currently searches, so it stands as not checked rather than as a confirmed or a failed finding. The firm’s own corporate page puts the group’s roots in 1964, with the HKEX listing dating to 1972 under that stock code and the First Shanghai name adopted in 1993.

What First Shanghai does not put a number on

The fees score of 3 out of 10 reflects pricing that this review could not confirm from a page it fetched directly. The earlier published review this piece draws on reported that commission rates require individual inquiry rather than appearing on a schedule, that bank wire transfers carry a charge whose amount is not disclosed, and that the firm does not offer negative balance protection, meaning a client trading on margin, in futures, or via short selling remains liable for a shortfall beyond their deposited funds. Deposits are accepted in HKD only, with withdrawals available in HKD or USD, which the same earlier review flagged as friction for anyone funding the account from outside Hong Kong. None of these figures come from a page our review process fetched directly, so they are restated here rather than quoted, and they should be read as what the earlier review found rather than as this review’s own document check.

Platform and support at First Shanghai

The First Shanghai Trade app spans mobile, web and desktop, with order types, indicators and charting scaling up from a basic mobile build to a fuller desktop terminal, but no automated trading on mobile or web and no demo account on any of the three, according to the earlier review. That absence of a trial mode is a real limit on the platform score of 6, since nothing in the record lets a prospective client test the system before funding it. Support contact details fetched directly from the firm’s Hong Kong contact page list a phone line at (852) 2522 2101, a fax number at (852) 2810 6789, and a Central, Hong Kong office address; live chat and social media channels were reported unavailable by the earlier review, which caps the support score at 6.8 despite the working phone and postal contact.

Why the score moved from 4.1 to 5.6

Our previous review of First Shanghai scored it 4.1 out of 10; this review scores it 5.6. That change reflects a rescored assessment against current evidence, not any change at the firm. The regulation score of 7.8 rests on direct SFC register checks across four group entities, run after a positive control confirmed the search method works, plus a clean result against 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius. Support and platform now carry documented detail, phone and address confirmed first-hand, that the earlier scoring did not have lined up against a register. Fees and reviews remain weak, at 3 and 4.4, because the underlying gaps, no published commission schedule and no negative balance protection, are the same gaps this review found in the record.

First Shanghai holds active Hong Kong SFC licences across four group entities and a clean check against 1,441 mirrored warning-list entries, but keeps commission pricing to individual inquiry rather than a published schedule and offers no demo account on any platform. TrueBroker scores it 5.6 out of 10.

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