IC Markets built its name as an Australian raw-spread broker, and it has now rebranded its global website to IC at ic.com. Traders in our five countries don’t deal with the Australian company. The global site is run by Raw Trading Ltd, a securities dealer licensed in Seychelles.
Is IC Markets regulated?
The entity behind ic.com is Raw Trading Ltd, registration 8419879-1, licensed by the Financial Services Authority of Seychelles under securities dealer license SD018. It trades as IC and IC Markets Global. Seychelles is tier 3 in our model. The group also runs regulated companies in Australia and Cyprus, but those don’t serve our readers.
Raw Trading’s own terms say it hasn’t been licensed by any regulator in your country of residence, and that you register “without solicitation”. That’s standard offshore wording, and it tells you where you’d stand in a dispute.
Regulator record
- Cyprus: CySEC fined the group’s EU entity, IC Markets (EU) Ltd, EUR 200,000 in July 2024 for exceeding the EU’s 30:1 leverage limit, then a further EUR 50,000 for order execution failures and EUR 10,000 for unclear cost information. IC Markets disputes the findings. The fines fall outside our 12-month cap window and hit the EU company, not Raw Trading, but they count against transparency.
- UK and Italy: the FCA has warned about the group’s offshore activity reaching UK clients, and Italy’s Consob blocked icmarkets.com for Italian users in October 2020.
- India: IC Markets is on the Reserve Bank of India’s Alert List of unauthorised forex platforms.
Costs and accounts
IC is known for raw pricing: spreads from 0.0 pips on its Raw Spread and cTrader Raw accounts, plus a Standard account and a swap-free option. The global site advertises leverage up to 1:5000 and says leverage is dynamic and can change at any time, which can raise your margin requirement on open positions. We haven’t yet captured its published commission and typical spread figures, so there’s no IC entry in The Log yet.
Platforms and execution
IC offers MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView and its own WebTrader, with over 2,850 instruments. It claims average execution under 40 milliseconds from Equinix NY4 servers in New York and says around 60% of trades come from automated systems.
Deposits and withdrawals
The global site lists Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Skrill and Neteller among its funding methods. It advertises instant deposits and fast withdrawals but gives no firm withdrawal time on the pages we checked.
Who IC Markets suits
IC suits scalpers and algorithmic traders who want raw pricing and every major platform, and who are comfortable with a Seychelles license. Its regulator record and the very high leverage on offer are the trade-offs.