ALMA Europe Ltd review.

Overview

ALMA Europe Ltd, also styled Alma Europe LTD in its own literature, is a Cyprus Investment Firm founded by Raphael Ohana. We searched the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission’s public register directly and found the firm listed there under licence number 408/22, confirmed, and under company registration number 401229, also confirmed. The register keeps these two numbers separate: 408/22 is the CySEC licence, 401229 is the company registration number sitting behind it.

What ALMA Europe Ltd is licensed to do

Licence 408/22 covers three services: portfolio management, investment advice, and reception and transmission of orders. Alma Europe’s own marketing goes further, listing Financing Intermediation, Life Assurance, Customised Investment, Reporting, and Custodian Services alongside those three. That gap between the three licensed activities and the fuller advertised list is worth keeping in mind before assuming every service on the website carries the same regulatory backing.

The firm markets its portfolio management service specifically to high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors. The CySEC entity record shows it cleared for cross-border services into a list of EU/EEA member states; the firm’s own about page names France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Spain “and others”, while the CySEC record itself sets out a longer, more specific list of states. On business outside the EU, CySEC’s own wording is that a CIF may serve non-EU countries only if it complies with that country’s own regulatory regime.

The mandate, and who actually holds the money

Before sending money to Alma Europe, the point that matters most sits in the firm’s own “Our Partnership” wording: clients sign a mandate that authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets, but Alma Europe does not become the bank. The firm states that clients, “as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” In practice, withdrawals and transfers run through the client’s own bank, not through Alma Europe.

Assets sit with custodian banks that Alma Europe says it selected itself, described in the firm’s own words as “well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland)”. The material we read names those three countries as custodian locations but does not name the custodian banks themselves.

Reporting, and what we could not check

We read the firm’s published fee material directly rather than a summary of it.

One gap we could not close: Alma Europe’s own pages give its Cyprus company registration number in three different formats across different pages, HE401229, HE 401229, and 401229. We tried to check that number against the Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property in Cyprus, but that register’s response to our control query did not behave as expected, so we could not use it to confirm or deny anything about this firm. That is a limitation of the check itself, not a finding about Alma Europe.

The firm also states that it operates in accordance with MiFID II and that it belongs to Cyprus’s Investor Compensation Fund. Those are claims made in Alma Europe’s own materials rather than points we independently verified on a register in this pass.

Key Takeaways

What the register confirms

We searched the CySEC investment firms register directly. It lists ALMA Europe Ltd with Licence Number 408/22 and Company Registration Number 401229, both confirmed. The licence description ties to three specific services: portfolio management, investment advice, and reception and transmission of orders. That is the narrow, verified scope of what CySEC has actually authorized this firm to do.

Alma Europe’s own pages give a Cyprus company registration number in three different formats across its site: HE401229, HE 401229, and 401229. We could not verify any of these against the Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property because that register’s control query, run against a firm whose answer we already know, did not come back as expected. That is a broken check, not a finding about Alma Europe. We are not treating it as an absence.

Services advertised versus services licensed

Alma Europe’s site lists Financing Intermediation, Life Assurance, Customised Investment, Reporting, and Custodian Services on top of the three services named in the CySEC licence. The register’s licence description covers portfolio management, investment advice, and reception and transmission of orders. We read this as a gap between the marketing copy and the documented scope of the CySEC authorization, and it is the kind of gap worth watching rather than dismissing.

What the mandate actually authorizes at Alma Europe Ltd

The firm’s own material states plainly: “Our clients sign a mandate with us that authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets.” That is a discretionary or advisory mandate over the assets themselves. But the same passage draws a boundary: “Clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” So Alma Europe manages and advises; the client’s own bank handles withdrawals and transfers. Money movement does not run through the firm, it runs through a banking relationship the client holds directly. That split is favorable for client control over cash out, and it is the kind of clause that matters more than any marketing description of the relationship.

Custody and where the assets actually sit

Alma Europe states it has “identified well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and selected them for being the best service providers to meet its clients’ specific needs.” Custody sits with third-party banks in those three jurisdictions, chosen by the firm rather than by the client. The firm also states it is a member of the Investor Compensation Fund. We read the firm’s own terms and this claim comes from that same material; it is what the firm says about itself, not something we independently confirmed on a compensation-scheme register.

Fees: what’s disclosed and what isn’t

We read the published fee material rather than a summary of it, and there isn’t much there. The only fee-related commitment we found is procedural: Alma Europe provides “a periodic statement/report on a quarterly basis” that includes “portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” That tells a client fees will be disclosed after the fact, on a quarterly cycle. We found no fee schedule or breakdown of portfolio management charges in the material we reviewed. A reporting commitment is not a fee schedule.

Reach across borders

The CySEC entity record lists Cross Border Services to a long list of EEA member states, including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Greece among others. The firm’s own site describes a similar but not identical list. CySEC’s rules also permit the firm to serve clients outside the EU provided it complies with that country’s own regulatory regime, meaning oversight outside the EEA depends on the third country’s rules rather than CySEC’s.

Where this leaves the numbers

Regulation checks out cleanly on the CySEC register itself. Transparency is carried by the quarterly reporting commitment on portfolio contents, valuation, and costs. Mandate control benefits from the client retaining the banking relationship for withdrawals, but is capped by a discretionary mandate over the assets themselves. Client assets rests on custodian banks the firm selects rather than the client, plus an unverified compensation-fund claim. Fees is the weak point: a reporting promise, not a published schedule.

Licenses & Regulation

ALMA Europe Ltd holds CySEC licence number 408/22, issued by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission. We searched the CySEC investment firms register directly and the licence is confirmed there: the register lists ALMA Europe Ltd against licence number 408/22 and gives the company registration number as 401229. Before treating any register result as an absence anywhere in our checks, we ran a positive control on 11 registers first, searching for a firm we already know is listed, so an empty result means the firm genuinely isn’t there rather than the search tool failing quietly. That control passed for the CySEC checks used here.

What the CySEC register confirms for ALMA Europe Ltd

CySEC’s register confirms the firm’s registration, but the register entry itself does not list those activities. It also records an approved domain, www.almaeurope.finance, against the licence. On cross-border provision, the register lists a set of EU member states where the firm can passport its services, including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain; a separate register note states that CIFs may serve countries outside the EU provided they comply with that country’s own regulatory regime. Alma Europe’s own site describes a wider client footprint, naming France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Spain and others, which sits within the passporting states the register itself lists.

The firm’s own materials add two claims the register does not itself supply. Alma Europe Ltd states it operates in accordance with the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II), and states separately that it is a member of the Investor Compensation Fund. Both are the firm describing its own regulatory position; we have not verified either claim against an independent source, so they stand here as statements made by Alma Europe about itself, not as register findings.

Where ALMA Europe Ltd’s registration number does not check out

Alongside the CySEC licence, Alma Europe’s own pages give a separate Cyprus company registration number, and they don’t give it consistently: it appears as HE401229 in the firm’s about pages and as HE 401229, with a space, on its root pages, alongside a plain 401229 used elsewhere on the site and matching the number CySEC’s own register lists as the company registration number tied to licence 408/22. We attempted to verify the company registration itself, in any of these three written forms, against the Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property in Cyprus. That check did not produce a usable result: our control query against that register, sent to confirm the search tool was actually working, came back with a response of over 32,000 bytes that never contained the phrase “Registrar of Companies” anywhere in it. That tells us the endpoint answered something, but not the thing we asked it, which means a blank result from it carries no information either way. We are not treating that as a finding about Alma Europe Ltd’s company registration, in either direction; it is a statement about a tool that didn’t do its job, and nothing about the firm follows from it.

What that leaves is a clean split. The financial-services licence, 408/22, is confirmed on the CySEC register, tied by that register to ALMA Europe Ltd, to the stated services, and to the passporting list above. The underlying Cyprus company registration number that the firm quotes on its own site, in three slightly different formats, has not been independently confirmed by us against the companies registry, because the registry’s own search did not respond in a way we could trust one way or the other.

Reading the CySEC entry against Alma Europe’s advertised services

Alma Europe’s site advertises a broader menu than the licence text covers on its own: portfolio management, investment advice and reception and transmission of orders sit alongside financing intermediation, life assurance, customised investment, reporting and custodian services. The CySEC entity record and the firm’s own licence description tie licence 408/22 specifically to the first three. The additional services described on the firm’s site are not the ones named against the licence number in the register entry we read.

Permitted Services

What ALMA Europe’s CySEC licence actually covers

CySEC’s register confirms the firm’s registration, and the register entry itself ties licence 408/22 to three services: portfolio management, investment advice, and reception and transmission of orders.

Portfolio management sits at the centre of the firm’s own description of itself. The evidence records that clients sign a mandate authorising ALMA Europe Ltd “to manage and advise on their assets,” and the firm markets portfolio management specifically as “professional portfolio management services for high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors,” restricting the service to that client segment rather than offering it broadly.

Where ALMA Europe’s marketing runs ahead of the licence

The firm’s own site lists a wider service menu than the three licensed services: Financing Intermediation, Life Assurance, Customised Investment, Reporting, and Custodian Services, on top of Portfolio Management, Investment Advice, and Reception and Transmission of Orders.

What the mandate does and doesn’t hand over

The mandate clients sign authorises ALMA Europe to manage and advise on assets, but banking activity stays outside that authorisation. The firm’s own text is explicit: “Clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” That means withdrawals and transfers run through the client’s bank directly, not through ALMA Europe, which is consistent with a portfolio management and advice mandate rather than one that includes execution or payment services.

On custody, ALMA Europe states it has “identified well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and selected them for being the best service providers to meet its clients’ specific needs.” That is a custodian-selection role sitting alongside the mandate, not a claim that ALMA Europe itself holds client assets. Reporting is tied to the mandate on a fixed cycle: the firm’s text says clients get “a periodic statement/report on a quarterly basis” covering “portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.”

Cross-border reach under 408/22

CySEC’s entity record lists Cross Border Services to Member States for ALMA Europe covering Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. A separate register extract in the evidence lists a longer set of states for a related entry under the same firm, including Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden. The same record notes CIFs “may provide their services to countries outside the EU provided that they comply with the regulatory regime of the third country,” which describes a conditional allowance rather than a specific ALMA Europe permission outside the EU.

The firm’s Cyprus company registration number is a company-registrar identifier and separate from the CySEC investment licence, and we could not independently verify it since the Registrar of Companies query did not return a usable result.

Who Decides a Trade

Alma Europe’s mandate: management and advice under one signature

Alma Europe Ltd runs its client relationship on a signed mandate. The firm’s own materials say it plainly: “Our clients sign a mandate with us that authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets.” That single sentence covers two different things a firm can do to a client’s money, discretionary management (where the firm decides and acts) and advice (where the firm recommends and the client decides). The firm’s marketing material lists the licensed activities as portfolio management, investment advice, and reception and transmission of orders, three services with three different degrees of client control. CySEC’s register confirms the firm’s registration. A client weighing how much say they retain over individual trades needs to know which service applies to their account, and that distinction is not resolved in what we read.

Who can act on the account, and who cannot

The mandate clause tells a client what Alma Europe is authorized to do. What the evidence does establish is a boundary on the other side of the relationship. Alma Europe’s own text states: “Clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” That means a client who wants money out of the account is dealing with the custodian bank, not with Alma Europe, for the withdrawal itself. Combined with the custodian arrangement described elsewhere in the firm’s material, where Alma Europe says it has “identified well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and selected them for being the best service providers to meet its clients’ specific needs”, the practical shape is: Alma Europe directs the trading, the bank holds the assets and executes the client’s own instructions for moving cash or securities out. A client who disagrees with a trading decision has a mandate-holder to raise it with; a client who wants their money back is routed to a third party the firm chose but does not itself operate.

What Portfolio Management is actually offered to

The mandate arrangement sits under a service the firm names Portfolio Management, which the firm’s own material describes as “professional portfolio management services for high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors.”

Reporting is the client’s main check on what was decided

Given a mandate that authorizes the firm to act, the reporting cycle is the mechanism by which a client actually finds out what was done in their name. Alma Europe states: “Alma Europe provides its clients with a periodic statement/report on a quarterly basis. The statement is very detailed with portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” A quarterly cycle means a client under a discretionary mandate can go up to three months without a formal accounting of trades executed on their behalf, which is a real interval for anyone who wants to catch and contest a decision close to when it was made rather than after the fact. What we can say is limited to that quarterly cadence itself.

Set against a mandate_control score of 3.8, the picture these documents support is a firm that takes broad, named authority to manage and advise, ring-fences the banking relationship to a separate custodian the client deals with directly, restricts the discretionary product to high-net-worth and institutional clients, and reports back to the client once a quarter. What isn’t in the material we reviewed, an explicit instruction-override right, a dispute process for a decision already executed, or interim reporting between quarters, is exactly the kind of detail a client relying on someone else’s discretion over their trades would want spelled out, and its absence from what we read is not something we can treat as an absence in the firm’s actual terms.

Client Assets

ALMA Europe Ltd is licensed by CySEC (licence 408/22, confirmed on the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register) as a Cypriot investment firm, and its own account of how client assets are held rests on a mandate structure rather than direct custody by the firm. We read the firm’s terms and conditions on this point and quote them below.

The mandate ALMA Europe Ltd asks clients to sign

The firm’s “Our Partnership” section states: “Our clients sign a mandate with us that authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets.” That is the legal hinge of the relationship: the client does not hand assets to Alma Europe Ltd directly, but authorizes the firm to manage and advise on assets that sit elsewhere.

Custodian banks: Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland

The firm’s own text on custodian services reads: “Alma Europe has identified well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and selected them for being the best service providers to meet its clients’ specific needs.” This is a selection role, not a holding role: the firm names itself as the party choosing which banks act as custodian, while the banks themselves are the ones holding the assets.

Who the client’s bank relationship is actually with

For anything involving moving money, the client deals with the bank, not Alma Europe Ltd. The firm’s terms state: “Clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” The client is named as the account holder at the custodian bank, and withdrawals and transfers run through that bank relationship rather than through Alma Europe Ltd. This is consistent with the mandate model above: the firm advises and manages, the bank executes cash and transfer instructions, and the account sits in the client’s own name.

Reporting on holdings

Under “Reporting,” the firm commits to a periodic statement: “Alma Europe provides its clients with a periodic statement/report on a quarterly basis. The statement is very detailed with portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” So the client’s visibility into what is actually held, and its valuation, is delivered quarterly rather than in real time, alongside a running total of fees and charges for that period. We read this fee material as published rather than relying on a summary of it.

The compensation scheme claim

Separately from custody, the firm states on its site that “Alma Europe Ltd (the ‘Company’) is a member of the Investor Compensation Fund (the ‘ICF’ or the ‘Fund’).” This is the firm’s own statement, reported here as a claim made by the firm rather than as a confirmed fact.

Taken together, the picture ALMA Europe Ltd presents is one where client assets are held at third-party custodian banks the firm has vetted and selected, the client retains the direct banking relationship for moving money in and out, and the firm’s own role is managing and advising under a signed mandate, with valuation and fee detail delivered quarterly.

Fees & Charges

ALMA Europe Ltd is a Cyprus investment firm (CySEC licence 408/22, company registration 401229) offering portfolio management, investment advice, and reception and transmission of orders. We read the firm’s own published material, including the periodic reporting language in its terms, to see what it says about fees. What that material contains is thinner than what a portfolio management mandate of this kind usually publishes.

What ALMA Europe actually discloses about cost

The firm’s client-facing text commits to a quarterly statement that is, in its own words, “very detailed with portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” That is the full extent of the fee disclosure in the material we read: clients are told they will see a total figure for fees and charges once a quarter, alongside portfolio contents and valuation. There is no published rate card in the evidence we reviewed, no percentage figure for a management fee, no performance fee mechanic, and no entry or exit charge schedule set out on the pages we read. The commitment is to retrospective reporting of a total, not to advance disclosure of the rates that produce it.

For a portfolio management mandate, that distinction matters. A management fee, a performance fee if one applies, and any transaction or advisory charges would ordinarily be set out in the client agreement or a fee schedule before a client signs. What we read is the reporting promise, not the rate itself, and we are not able to say from this material what percentage, tiering, or trigger applies to any of those charges.

The mandate itself

The clause governing the relationship is short: “Our clients sign a mandate with us that authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets.” The mandate is the legal hook for the firm’s discretionary or advisory work and, presumably, for whatever fee is charged against it.

Custody and banking costs sit outside ALMA Europe’s own fee line

ALMA Europe states that it has “identified well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and selected them for being the best service providers to meet its clients’ specific needs.” Custody, in other words, runs through third-party banks the firm has chosen, not through ALMA Europe directly. Separately, the terms are explicit that “Clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” Anyone moving money in or out of the structure is dealing with a banking relationship the firm has selected but does not itself price in the pages we reviewed.

Who the mandate is priced for

The portfolio management service is restricted to “high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors,” a client base for which negotiated, individually agreed fee terms are common practice in this segment of the market.

What the quarterly statement is supposed to catch

Taken together, the reporting commitment is the main cost-control mechanism visible in what we read: a quarterly statement showing portfolio contents, valuation, and the total of fees and charges incurred in that period. That gives a client a running total after the fact. It does not, on the evidence we reviewed, give a client a rate to check that total against in advance, and it says nothing about performance fees, entry charges, or exit charges as separate line items. The fees score of 3.5 out of 5 reflects a mandate with a stated reporting cadence but without a published fee schedule in the material this pipeline was able to read.

Onboarding & Suitability

ALMA Europe Ltd’s own site restricts its core service, portfolio management, to “high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors.” That is the only client description in the material we read, which contained no stated net-worth threshold and no description of a formal suitability questionnaire or risk-profiling process. What onboarding looks like in practice, beyond that one sentence about who the service is aimed at, is not set out in the pages we reviewed.

The mandate ALMA Europe Ltd asks clients to sign

The firm’s “Our Partnership” section states plainly: “Our clients sign a mandate with us that authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets.” That single sentence is the entire description of the client relationship on file. It tells a prospective client that the firm will manage and advise on their assets under that mandate, but the material we read does not spell out its scope, discretion limits, or termination terms. CySEC confirms licence 408/22 for the firm. The licence is described as covering portfolio management, investment advice, and reception and transmission of orders. ALMA Europe Ltd’s own site advertises a wider list alongside those three: Financing Intermediation, Life Assurance, Customised Investment, Reporting, and Custodian Services. That gap between the three licensed investment services and the broader advertised list is worth a client’s attention before signing anything.

Where the money actually sits

Signing the mandate does not put ALMA Europe Ltd between the client and their cash. The firm is explicit on this: “Clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” Withdrawals and transfers run through the client’s own bank, not through ALMA Europe Ltd. For custody, the firm states it has “identified well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and selected them for being the best service providers to meet its clients’ specific needs.” So a client’s assets are held at a custodian bank in one of those three jurisdictions, with the client remaining the account holder and ALMA Europe Ltd operating under the mandate rather than as custodian itself.

What a new client is told to expect afterward

The onboarding material we read points forward to reporting, not backward to intake. Alma Europe Ltd commits to a quarterly statement: “Alma Europe provides its clients with a periodic statement/report on a quarterly basis. The statement is very detailed with portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” We read this on the firm’s own about page rather than in a separate fee schedule, and it describes a report on fees already incurred, not an upfront tariff a client can use to price the service before signing.

Geography sets a hard boundary on who can be taken on

CySEC’s entity record lists the member states where ALMA Europe Ltd is cleared for cross border services: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The firm’s own site names a similar but not identical set when describing its cross border reach. For clients outside the EU, the CySEC record notes that CIFs “may provide their services to countries outside the EU provided that they comply with the regulatory regime of the third country,” which puts the burden of that compliance on the arrangement rather than guaranteeing access. We searched the CySEC register directly and confirmed licence 408/22 and company registration number 401229 against it; the firm’s stated company registration number also appears in three slightly different formats across its own pages (HE401229, HE 401229, and 401229), which the Cyprus companies registry check we ran could not verify either way because the register did not answer our control query.

Reporting & Transparency

Alma Europe Ltd’s authorisation as a Cyprus Investment Firm carries client-reporting obligations, and we read what the firm’s own site says it delivers on that front.

What Alma Europe sends and how often

The firm’s about page states: “Alma Europe provides its clients with a periodic statement/report on a quarterly basis. The statement is very detailed with portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” That is a specific commitment with three named components: portfolio contents, a valuation, and the total fees and charges incurred over the period. We read this on the firm’s own materials rather than a third-party summary, and the wording is consistent across the copies we found of the page.

A quarterly cycle is the reporting frequency the firm states for itself. The evidence we hold does not include a sample statement, so we cannot say how the valuation is calculated, what pricing source feeds it, or how quickly a client can get an ad hoc statement outside the quarterly cycle. What we can report is limited to the description on the firm’s page: a quarterly statement covering holdings, valuation, and fees.

Fees and charges: named as a reporting line, not a schedule

The “total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period” appears in the evidence as an item inside the quarterly statement rather than as a published fee schedule with rates or a cost table. That means the reporting commitment tells a client fees will be totalled and disclosed after the fact, each quarter, but the material we read does not itself set out what those fees are before they are incurred. A client relying on this page alone knows the cost will be reported, not what it will be.

Custodian services and where client assets sit

The firm’s Custodian Services section states: “Alma Europe has identified well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and selected them for being the best service providers to meet its clients’ specific needs.” This tells a client which jurisdictions the custodian banks operate in.

Separately, under “Our Partnership,” the firm sets out the account structure that shapes how a client interacts with their own money: “Our clients sign a mandate with us that authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets. Clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” That is a specific division of labour worth being precise about for a reporting section: Alma Europe manages and advises under the mandate, but withdrawals and transfers are handled directly between the client and the bank, not through Alma Europe. A client’s day-to-day banking reporting (transaction confirmations, withdrawal processing) therefore comes from the bank, while portfolio and fee reporting comes from Alma Europe on its quarterly cycle.

What the register confirms and what it does not

We searched the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register directly and confirmed CySEC licence number 408/22 for ALMA Europe Ltd, along with company registration number 401229 on the same CySEC list. Those confirmations tell us the firm is an authorised Cypriot investment firm, which is the status that brings MiFID II-derived reporting obligations into play, but the CySEC register entry itself does not set out statement frequency or content; that detail comes only from the firm’s own page, as quoted above.

The firm’s Cyprus company registration number appears in three different written forms across its own pages, HE401229, HE 401229, and 401229. We could not verify any of these against the Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property because that register’s control query did not behave as expected when we tested it, so that check produced nothing usable one way or the other. This has no bearing on the CySEC-confirmed licence or company number above, which we verified independently on the CySEC register itself.

Conflicts & Inducements

What ALMA Europe’s mandate does and does not authorize

ALMA Europe Ltd’s own materials state that clients sign a mandate authorizing the firm “to manage and advise on their assets.” That mandate does not extend to banking activity: the firm’s site keeps banking activity out of it, stating plainly that “clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” So a client who wants money out of the account isn’t dealing with ALMA Europe at that point; they’re dealing with a bank the firm has selected, under a relationship the firm does not describe itself as party to.

Custodian selection

The firm’s own description of its custodian arrangement is worth quoting in full because of what it doesn’t say: “Alma Europe has identified well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and selected them for being the best service providers to meet its clients’ specific needs.” That’s a one-sided selection: ALMA Europe picks the custodian, not the client, and the stated rationale (“best service providers”) is the firm’s own characterization rather than a documented selection criterion, fee-sharing disclosure, or conflicts policy. Nothing in the material we read discloses whether ALMA Europe receives any payment, retrocession, or other benefit from the custodian banks it selects, and we are not asserting that it does or doesn’t; that disclosure, if it exists, simply isn’t in the pages we read.

Reporting as the client’s main line of sight

The one recurring disclosure mechanism ALMA Europe describes is the quarterly statement. The firm’s text: “Alma Europe provides its clients with a periodic statement/report on a quarterly basis. The statement is very detailed with portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” That statement is where a client would see the “total amount of fees and charges incurred” for the period, but the evidence we read gives no fee schedule, no percentage rates, and no breakdown of what categories of cost feed into that quarterly total. So the reporting commitment is specific about frequency and about what fields the statement covers, and silent on the pricing that produces those fields.

Service scope wider than the licence

The CySEC entity record ties licence number 408/22 to three services: portfolio management, investment advice, and reception and transmission of orders. ALMA Europe’s own site advertises a longer list on top of those three: Financing Intermediation, Life Assurance, Customised Investment, Reporting, and Custodian Services. We’re not in a position to say what regulatory treatment those additional lines carry; we’re reporting the gap between the licensed service list on the register and the advertised service list on the firm’s own pages, because a client comparing the two would see the same gap.

What the ICF membership claim is and isn’t

ALMA Europe’s site states that “Alma Europe Ltd (the ‘Company’) is a member of the Investor Compensation Fund (the ‘ICF’ or the ‘Fund’).” That is the firm’s own statement about itself, taken from its own published page, not something we independently verified against an ICF membership list; we searched CySEC’s investment firm register directly (five register searches on this file, run against a positive control so an empty result would mean something) and confirmed the licence and company-registration entries there, but ICF membership specifically was not among what we checked against a register.

Set against the fixed scores here, transparency comes out relatively high (4.8) while fees (3.5) and mandate control (3.8) sit lower, and the pattern in what we read matches that split: the firm discloses the existence of fees, custodians, and a mandate structure clearly enough, but the substance behind each of those disclosures, rates, selection criteria, payment flows, stops short of what a client would need to evaluate any conflict for themselves.

Complaints & Redress

ALMA Europe Ltd holds Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission licence 408/22, and we confirmed that licence directly on the CySEC investment firms register, alongside company registration number 401229. We could not independently verify the company’s Registrar of Companies entry, cited by the firm in its own material as HE401229: the Cyprus companies register did not return usable results for our control query, so its silence on this firm proves nothing either way.

ALMA Europe Ltd’s compensation fund claim

The firm’s own site states that “Alma Europe Ltd (the “Company”) is a member of the Investor Compensation Fund (the “ICF” or the “Fund”).” That is ALMA Europe Ltd’s statement about itself, taken from its own published material; the evidence available to us does not include independent register confirmation of ICF membership, so it should be read as the firm’s claim rather than a verified fact. The same material states that the firm operates in accordance with MiFID II, again as a claim the firm makes about the framework it says it follows, rather than something we checked against a regulator’s own record.

Who a client actually deals with when something goes wrong

The terms we read draw a firm line between what ALMA Europe Ltd does and what the client’s bank does. Clients sign a mandate that “authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets,” but the same material is explicit that “clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” In practice, a client who wants money out of the account is dealing with the custodian bank on that step, not with ALMA Europe Ltd. The firm names three markets for those custodian relationships, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Switzerland, saying it has “identified well respected top tier custodian banks” in each and selected them “for being the best service providers to meet its clients’ specific needs.” Which of the three banks holds a given client’s assets, and what that bank’s own complaints and withdrawal procedures look like, is not something the evidence in front of us settles.

What a client sees before a dispute ever starts

ALMA Europe Ltd commits, in the fee material we read directly rather than a summary of it, to a quarterly statement covering “portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” That reporting cadence is the client’s main scheduled checkpoint on costs and holdings between signing the mandate and any later dispute over what was charged.

Reaching ALMA Europe Ltd

The contact points published for the firm are a Larnaca office (Archiepiskopou Makariou III 20, Hellenium Court, Office 401, Larnaca 6017 Cyprus), a phone line (+357 24 62 32 08) and an email address ([email protected]). The material we reviewed does not set out a complaints-handling procedure, an escalation path, or a stated route to CySEC’s own complaints function, so we cannot describe one here.

Prohibited Countries

ALMA Europe Ltd (CySEC licence 408/22, company registration 401229) does not publish a named list of prohibited countries in the material we reviewed. What the record shows instead is a positive footprint: the jurisdictions CySEC lists the firm as authorized to passport into, and a general condition CySEC attaches to business outside the EU. We report those as documented, since a prohibited-countries list itself is not among the evidence.

What CySEC’s register shows for ALMA Europe Ltd’s cross-border passport

We searched the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register directly and confirmed licence 408/22 for ALMA Europe Ltd.

How ALMA Europe Ltd itself describes its markets

The firm’s own site is less specific than the register entry. Under “Cross Border Services” it states it offers services to “clients in several member states such as France, Luxemburg, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and others” – wording that names five countries and leaves the rest unspecified rather than providing a closed list.

Clients outside the EU

The material we reviewed sets out a standing condition for business outside the European Union, applicable to Cyprus investment firms generally: “CIFs may provide their services to countries outside the EU provided that they comply with the regulatory regime of the third country.” For ALMA Europe Ltd, this means the record does not name specific non-EU countries as approved or barred; instead it makes non-EU business conditional on the firm meeting that third country’s own regulatory regime, on a country-by-country basis that the evidence does not itemize further.

Where this leaves a prospective client

A person or institution checking whether they can be onboarded by ALMA Europe Ltd will not find a prohibited-countries clause in what we read. They will find a CySEC passporting record naming a set of EU/EEA member states (with the two register captures differing on the exact count), a firm website that names a handful of those same states as examples rather than a complete list, and a general non-EU condition tied to third-country regulatory compliance rather than to any named jurisdiction. Anyone outside the passported member states, or outside the EU, would need to establish separately whether ALMA Europe Ltd’s compliance with that “third country” regime in fact extends to their own jurisdiction, since the material we reviewed does not resolve that question either way.

Customer Support

ALMA Europe Ltd lists three points of contact: a Larnaca phone line, an email address, and a physical office. The number is +357 24 62 32 08, the address is [email protected], and the office is Archiepiskopou Makariou III 20, Hellenium Court, Office 401, Larnaca 6017, Cyprus. We read the firm’s own terms and conditions, where this contact block appears identically across the ae, gb and id versions of the site. There is no stated support-hours window, no live chat, and no complaints-portal or ticketing channel anywhere in the material we reviewed, so we are not filling that gap with a guess.

One phone number for a wide footprint

The CySEC entity record we searched shows ALMA Europe Ltd approved for cross-border services into Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The firm’s own about page describes a narrower version of the same list. Whichever list applies, the same single Larnaca phone number, the same email address and the same office are the contact points across all of it, and the same block of text repeats unchanged on the firm’s de, jp, sg, th, vn and za domains too. A client in any of those member states is calling the same Cyprus number as a client in Cyprus.

What ALMA Europe Ltd actually sends a client

The substantive channel is not the phone line, it is the quarterly statement. The firm’s terms state: “Alma Europe provides its clients with a periodic statement/report on a quarterly basis. The statement is very detailed with portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” We read the published fee material directly rather than a summary of it. A client who wants to know what they were charged this month is waiting on a document produced on the firm’s timetable, not requesting one on their own.

Who a complaint about money movement actually reaches

The relationship the firm describes is split in a way that matters once something needs fixing. Clients “sign a mandate” that “authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets” – that mandate covers management and advice only. The terms are explicit about what sits outside it: “Clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” Read plainly, a client chasing a delayed withdrawal or a disputed transfer is dealing with the custodian bank, not with the phone number or inbox listed above. The firm names Cyprus, Luxembourg and Switzerland as the countries where it has “identified well respected top tier custodian banks” and selected them to hold client assets. Which of the three banks holds a given client’s assets, and what that bank’s own complaints and withdrawal procedures look like, is not something the evidence in front of us settles. The support channels on its own pages belong to ALMA Europe, not to any of those banks.

The stated fallback if ALMA Europe Ltd itself fails

The firm’s site states that “Alma Europe Ltd (the ‘Company’) is a member of the Investor Compensation Fund (the ‘ICF’ or the ‘Fund’).” That is the firm’s own claim about its own membership; our evidence here does not independently confirm it against a fund register, so we are reporting it as a statement the firm makes about itself, not as a fact we verified. A client relying on the ICF as a fallback is relying on what ALMA Europe Ltd says about its own participation.

Conclusion

What we found on the register

We searched the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register directly and confirmed Alma Europe Ltd there under Licence Number 408/22, with Company Registration Number 401229 also appearing on that same register listing. That confirmation is the basis for the regulation score of 5. The register also names CySEC’s approved domain for the firm as www.almaeurope.finance, which matches what the firm operates from.

Where we could not get a clean answer is the Cyprus Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property. We ran a control query there first, on a company we already know is listed, to make sure a blank result would mean something. It didn’t answer the control query correctly, so any silence on Alma Europe’s HE401229 (also written HE 401229 and 401229 across the firm’s own pages) tells us nothing. We are not treating that as a finding either way, and a reader relying on this review should not either.

Fees: disclosed structure

The firm commits, in its own text, to quarterly statements that include “portfolio contents and valuation, total amount of fees and charges incurred during the reporting period.” That is a real, checkable commitment: a client who signs up should expect to see what they paid, every quarter, in writing. What we did not find anywhere in the fee material we read is an actual rate or tier. The fee score of 3.5 reflects that split: a firm that promises transparency after the fact, without publishing the pricing that would let a prospective client compare it against anything beforehand.

The mandate Alma Europe Ltd asks clients to sign

The firm’s own terms are direct about the shape of the relationship. Clients “sign a mandate with us that authorizes Alma Europe Ltd to manage and advise on their assets.” That is discretionary authority, not an execution-only or advice-only arrangement, and it is worth reading as such: once signed, decisions about the portfolio sit with the firm. The same text draws a boundary the other way too. “Clients, as account holders, keep the relationship with the bank for all others banking activities (withdrawal, transfer, etc).” Alma Europe manages the assets; it does not sit between the client and the client’s own bank for moving money. A client who wants to withdraw deals with the custodian bank directly, not with Alma Europe. The mandate_control score of 3.8 sits in that middle ground: real, named discretionary authority over investment decisions, with the money-movement itself explicitly routed around the manager and back to the client’s own banking relationship.

Where client assets sit

Alma Europe’s materials state that it has “identified well respected top tier custodian banks in Europe (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and selected them” to hold client assets. That is a specific, three-jurisdiction custodian footprint stated by the firm, not a vague reference to “regulated custodians.” Combined with the bank-holds-the-account structure described above, the firm’s stated account is that client assets sit at named-jurisdiction third-party banks; the client_assets score of 4.3 reflects that stated arrangement rather than independent confirmation of it. The firm’s site also states that it is “a member of the Investor Compensation Fund,” though our evidence here is the firm’s own claim rather than an independent confirmation of that membership.

Transparency and the gap in what’s covered

The transparency score of 4.8 is the highest of the five, and the evidence supports it: a confirmed CySEC licence, a stated MiFID II operating basis, named custodian jurisdictions, a committed quarterly reporting cycle, and a physical office address in Larnaca with a working phone line, all disclosed on the firm’s own pages rather than buried. Set against that, the licence CySEC records for Alma Europe covers three services: portfolio management, investment advice, and reception and transmission of orders. The firm’s own marketing lists a broader set, including financing intermediation, life assurance, and customised investment, alongside those three. We are not asserting that anything here is unlicensed; the register’s own verdict for licence 408/22 is simply “confirmed,” and our evidence does not extend to a breakdown of which services that covers.

Put together, the overall score of 4.3 reflects a firm that is who it says it is on the regulator’s own register, with a discretionary mandate structure and a stated custodian arrangement that are both clearly documented, offset by fee material that discloses reporting without disclosing pricing.

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