CMC Markets review.

Overview

CMC Markets is one of the oldest names in UK retail trading. The group has been authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority since December 2001, is listed on the London Stock Exchange as part of the FTSE 250, and runs two separately authorised UK entities rather than one. That combination — a long authorisation history, public-company reporting obligations, and UK-domiciled entities — puts it in a small group of brokers where the licence a retail client actually onboards with is the same top-tier licence used in the marketing.

That is worth stating plainly, because the opposite is the norm. Most brokers we review advertise an FCA or CySEC licence and then onboard retail clients through an offshore entity in Seychelles, Mauritius or Vanuatu, where the protections are materially weaker. CMC does not do this for UK clients.

The caveat is cost structure rather than safety. CMC’s pricing is spread- and holding-cost driven, with several charges — currency conversion, market data, overnight holding — that sit outside the headline “commission-free” framing on share dealing.

Overview Table

Facts List

• Authorised by the FCA continuously since December 2001
• Two separately authorised UK entities, both currently Authorised
• Holds the FCA permission to hold and control client money
• Client assets covered by the FSCS up to £85,000
• Publicly listed — FTSE 250 constituent, so subject to public reporting
• No commission on UK and European share dealing
• Share and ETF CFDs carry a commission on entry and exit, varying by market
• Overnight holding costs applied at 22:00 UK time
• A currency conversion fee applies to non-base-currency trades
• cmcmarkets.com has been registered since 2003 — over 20 years

Key Takeaways

• The licence is the real one. UK clients onboard with an FCA-authorised UK entity, not an offshore subsidiary — the single most important thing this review checked.
• Two entities, both live. CMC Markets UK plc (173730) and CMC Markets Investments Limited (948126) are separately authorised. Check which one your account agreement names.
• FSCS applies up to £85,000 per eligible claimant, which is not available from offshore-registered competitors.
• Authorised since 2001 — a 24-year unbroken authorisation history.
• A clone is trading on the name. The FCA register lists an unauthorised ‘CMC GLOBAL MARKETS’ with no reference number. It is not CMC Markets.
• Commission-free is not fee-free. Currency conversion and market data charges apply to share dealing, and CFD positions accrue overnight holding costs.
• Platform choice is broad — proprietary web and mobile plus MetaTrader and TradingView.
• We could not verify a minimum deposit or a headline spread, so we have left both blank rather than repeat an unsourced figure.

Licenses & Regulation

We checked both entities directly against the FCA Financial Services Register rather than relying on the broker’s own description of its status.

Regulatory Licenses

Both records return Authorised, both are registered at EC3A 7BX in London, and CMC Markets UK plc holds the FCA permission to hold and control client money — the permission that determines whether client funds must be segregated from the firm’s own.

A clone is using this name

Searching the FCA register for “CMC Markets” returns a third result: CMC GLOBAL MARKETS, listed as Unauthorised with no firm reference number. Entries like this are how clone fraud works — an unauthorised operation adopts a trusted brand name and relies on the reader recognising it.

If you are contacted by anything calling itself CMC Global Markets, it is not this broker. Verify the firm reference number 173730 on the FCA register before depositing, and be aware that a firm reference number quoted in an email proves nothing on its own — clones routinely quote the real firm’s number. Check that the entity name against the number matches too.

A correction: our UK finding does not describe the group

An earlier version of this review led on CMC onboarding UK clients through a UK entity rather than an offshore one — true, and still true. But it read as though that described the whole group. It does not, and a ten-country sweep shows why.

Every market not on CMC’s own list is served by its Bermuda company — we confirmed it from the UAE and Vietnam, both returning the Bermuda entity, a 48% loss figure and 1:200 maximum retail leverage. The UK page, fetched at the same moment, shows 68% and FSCS cover.

Note what does and does not follow. 1:200 is not a breach of the regulator named on that page — the Bermuda Monetary Authority sets no retail cap. But it is nearly seven times the leverage the same brand offers in the UK, sold under the same name, to clients in markets with the least recourse. The 48% figure is also not comparable to the 68%: it is a different entity’s client base.

Germany is shipping a broken mandatory disclosure

On cmcmarkets.com/de-de/, the risk warning renders as:

… XX der Kleinanlegerkonten verlieren Geld beim Handel mit CFDs und OTC Optionen bei diesem Anbieter.

The literal string “XX” appears where the percentage must be. We verified this directly on 27 July 2026; the page carries BaFin registration 154814 alongside it. Under ESMA and BaFin rules that percentage is mandatory and firm-specific. The number is injected in the browser and never resolves in the served page. The same entity’s Irish page shows 70%, so that is the likely value.

This is almost certainly a bug rather than evasion — but it means German visitors are currently shown a compliance placeholder instead of the disclosure the rules require.

Thirteen entities, and a UAE routing mismatch

CMC operates at least thirteen legal entities: two in the UK, one in Germany (with Oslo, Warsaw and Madrid branches), two in Australia, and one each in New Zealand, Canada, Singapore (plus a separate Singapore investing company), Bermuda and the DIFC. The group also lists CMC Markets Middle East Ltd at ICD Brookfield Place in the DIFC — yet a UAE visitor is routed to Bermuda, not to that office.

How to Trade

CMC offers three distinct product types, and they carry different protections and different cost models. Confusing them is the most common way a new client ends up with an unexpected charge.

• Share dealing (investing) — you own the underlying shares. No commission on UK and European shares.
• Spread betting — a leveraged derivative, UK-specific, priced through the spread with overnight holding costs.
• CFDs — leveraged derivatives on indices, commodities, forex, shares, treasuries, share baskets and ETFs.

Leveraged products carry the risk of losing money rapidly; CMC’s own site carries the standard FCA-mandated risk warning to that effect. Retail leverage for UK clients is capped by FCA rules, not by the broker’s preference.

Account Types

CMC publishes a demo account with £10,000 of virtual funds alongside its live accounts.

We were not able to verify a published minimum deposit, tiered account structure, or per-tier pricing from a primary source at the time of writing, so this review does not state one. If you are comparing minimums across brokers, take the figure from your own account-opening screen, not from a comparison table.

The costs, quantified

• Currency conversion: ±0.7% around the mid-price when an instrument is priced in another currency. Applies to cash equities and CFDs, not to spread bets.
• Inactivity: £10 per month after one continuous year without trading. Nothing is deducted if the account is empty.
• FX Active: spreads from 0.0 pips on six major pairs, with a fixed 0.0025% commission (about $2.50 per $100,000 traded).
• Share and ETF CFDs: commission on entry and exit, varying by the market of origin — nil on UK and European shares, Greek shares excepted.
• Market data fees apply to shares from six countries: Abu Dhabi, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Singapore.
• Overnight holding charged at 22:00 UK time; rolling a forward position saves 50% of the spread.
• Guaranteed stop-loss premium is refunded in full if the order is not triggered.

We could not obtain per-instrument spread and swap tables: they load from an API rather than the page, so no typical EUR/USD spread is published in a form we can verify. We have left it blank rather than take a figure from a comparison site.

A note on the FSCS figure

CMC’s own pages state FSCS protection of £85,000, repeated across its regulations, costs and about pages as at 27 July 2026. Trading 212’s site states £120,000 for deposit protection. We are reporting what each broker publishes; if the statutory limit has moved, CMC’s published figure is the stale one — worth checking before relying on it.

Negative Balance Protection

Negative balance protection for retail clients is a requirement under FCA rules for firms offering CFDs to UK retail traders, rather than a discretionary feature. As an FCA-authorised firm serving UK retail clients, CMC is within that regime.

Professional-category clients can opt out of several retail protections, including this one. If you are offered a “professional” upgrade in exchange for higher leverage, this is one of the things you are giving up.

Trading Instruments

CMC’s published cost pages break its markets into indices, commodities, forex, shares, treasuries, share baskets and ETFs, across share dealing, spread betting and CFDs.

We have deliberately not quoted a total instrument count. Headline counts are marketing figures that are rarely defined consistently between brokers, and we could not verify one from a primary source.

Around 13,000 CFD instruments and 16,000+ global stocks and ETFs. Two things the earlier review missed: CMC also offers OTC options, cash settled, with no commission or holding fees; and cryptocurrency CFDs — but not in the UK, where the FCA bans them for retail clients. Crypto appears on the German, Singapore and Bermuda sites, and the Bermuda entity accepts USDT and USDC funding via Binance Pay.

Education & Analysis

CMC publishes news and analysis alongside its learning material, and integrates TradingView, which brings its charting and community analysis into the trading workflow.

Treat broker-published analysis as what it is: content produced by a firm that earns when you trade. It can be useful, but it is not independent research.

Special Offers

We found no deposit bonus or promotional credit offer published for UK clients. That is expected rather than a shortcoming — the FCA restricts promotional inducements to trade for retail clients, so a UK-regulated broker offering a large deposit bonus would itself be a warning sign.

If you are offered a deposit bonus in the name of a UK-regulated broker, treat it as a strong indicator that you are not dealing with the regulated entity.

Opening an Account

As an FCA-authorised firm, CMC must complete identity and appropriateness checks before you can trade leveraged products. Expect to provide identity and address documents and to answer questions establishing that you understand leveraged trading.

One thing to check at signup: which legal entity your client agreement names. Two CMC entities are separately authorised, and the agreement tells you which one holds your money.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Client money held by CMC Markets UK plc falls under the FCA client money regime — the firm holds the specific permission to hold and control client money. In practice that means client funds are required to be segregated from the firm’s own funds.

Eligible claims are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £85,000 per person if the firm fails. This is the single largest practical difference between a UK-regulated broker and an offshore one, where no comparable scheme exists.

Costs to expect

• Currency conversion fee — charged to convert foreign currencies into your account’s base currency. Applies to share dealing as well as derivatives.
• Market data fees — may apply on share dealing.
• Share and ETF CFD commission — charged on both entry and exit, varying by the market the share originates from. UK and European shares trade commission-free, with Greek shares excepted.
• Overnight holding costs — applied at 22:00 UK time (17:00 EST) to positions held open.

We could not verify a fixed withdrawal fee from a primary source and have left that field blank rather than assume it is zero.

Customer Support

CMC publishes a direct UK phone number, +44 (0)20 7170 8200, with lines open 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday, and a client management email address, [email protected]. A published landline with stated hours and a named registered office are a meaningful signal in this industry — a large share of the brokers we score at the bottom of the board publish none of the three.

We were not able to verify language coverage or weekend cover from a primary source and so have not stated them.

Prohibited Countries

Access is determined by which CMC entity may serve which jurisdiction, and this changes. We have not reproduced a country list here, because an out-of-date restriction list is worse than none — it invites someone to assume they are covered when they are not.

Confirm eligibility during account opening, and confirm which entity is accepting you.

Conclusion

On the question this site exists to answer — is the money protected — CMC Markets is among the stronger names we have reviewed. The FCA authorisation is real, current, and covers the entity a UK retail client actually deals with. It has held that authorisation continuously since 2001, holds the client money permission, is covered by the FSCS to £85,000, and is a listed FTSE 250 company subject to public reporting. Very few of the 172 brokers on our board can say all five.

The honest caveats are about cost and about clarity rather than safety. “Commission-free” share dealing still carries currency conversion and market data charges, CFD positions accrue overnight holding costs, and share CFD commissions vary by market. None of this is hidden — it is on CMC’s own costs page — but it does mean the cheapest-looking headline is not the whole price.

We have also flagged the unauthorised CMC GLOBAL MARKETS entry on the FCA register. That is not a mark against CMC Markets; it is a warning to the reader. A well-known regulated name is exactly what clone operations impersonate, and checking the firm reference number and the entity name against the register before depositing is the habit that defeats it.

Suits clients who want UK regulatory protection and a broad platform choice, and who will read a costs page. Those optimising purely for the lowest headline spread should compare total cost of a realistic holding period, not the spread alone.

FAQ