“Revolut has a phenomenal distribution business; our partnership with them is one of deep infrastructure integration,” said Chris Cheverall, Head of UK at CMC Markets, which offers API partner delivery solutions for Revolut’s CFD offering. He also revealed that the broker “identified a clear and growing space within the neobank sector a couple of years ago” and launched “a prime brokerage business that covers cash and synthetic PB last year.”
“Collaboration Between an Institutional Provider and a Fintech Platform”
CMC partnered with Revolut in 2024 as the challenger bank began offering retail CFDs across three markets. Although the initial pilot was limited to a small geography, it quietly launched CFD trading in 29 countries last year, mostly in Europe.
“What has been particularly encouraging about this partnership is how seamlessly the solution has scaled alongside their expanding user base without compromising on performance,” Cheverall said.
Read more: CMC Connect Breaks Down CFDs Deal with Revolut
However, the circulation of CFDs still remains very limited compared to Revolut’s global presence. It operates in 160 countries and serves more than 70 million customers.
“The partnership is one of many strong examples CMC has of how institutional providers and fintech platforms can collaborate to deliver robust, client-centric solutions, and we built a framework that not only meets Revolut's demands but is flexible enough to support future demands across products, geographies, and client segments.”
“The firm will continue to pursue its direct-to-consumer business, which is really important for us in the UK, as it is the birthplace of the product and CMC. In fact, the firm has a globally established institutional business. Typically, that is in the form of partnerships.”
#Revolut's CFD trading feature offering 2x leverage just showed up in the Revolut app for EU based user. In June 2024 Revolut entered into partnership with CMC Markets for access to various markets including CFDs for its customers. pic.twitter.com/ij37GdDWgh
— Max Karpis (@maxkarpis) January 24, 2025
The broker generated £182 million from B2C clients and £111.3 million from B2B clients in the last fiscal year.
“We are still heavily invested in direct-to-consumer, and we are still heavily invested in our B2B and partnership model.”
The London-headquartered broker is also focusing on expanding its neobank API business. Cheverall revealed that, while around 70 per cent of CMC's D2C user base is mobile-first, the figure is 100 per cent when it comes to the neo space.
“The more digital banks and service providers that are out there across payments, crypto, commercial banking, or wealth are going to, if not already, move into trading and investment products, which is where they can partner with somebody like CMC,” he added. “All of those neobanks require scalable institutional growth solutions tailored to their platform's needs.”
CMC’s advantage here? It “specialises in this space” and, as Cheverall pointed out, “I do not think anybody in that space with an existing client base wants to rely on a partner and be the first partner that their provider builds for.”
The broker is also focused on capturing the institutional space with its new prime brokerage offerings. “From a strategy perspective, we did this so we could capture higher-value institutional clients, which will help build institutional credibility,” the UK Head of the broker added. “Essentially, this is a prime services model which sits alongside and complements our retail business.”
“CMC already has strong liquidity relationships, execution technology, and robust risk management, so prime services for us were a natural extension of what we do.”
“Funds-in-Transit Credit Line Gives Institutional Clients the Flexibility to Maintain and Manage Exposures During Volatility”
CMC Markets is also known for offering institutional liquidity, including gold. “Precious metals have drawn significant client attention at CMC,” Cheverall added, “as macro uncertainties have driven asset rotation.”
He also revealed that “the extreme price moves and elevated volatility that characterised the gold rally did shift client behaviour in some notable ways.” Traders, according to him, started looking beyond trading metrics and scrutinising holding costs, margin dynamics, and the reliability of the trading infrastructure rather than focusing purely on thematic directional opportunities.
“On the operational side, CMC's ability to maintain stable margin levels, despite rising exchange margin and prime broker margin, proved a key differentiator,” he said. “We also have something called a funds-in-transit credit line, which gives our institutional clients the flexibility to maintain and manage exposures during the most volatile intraday episodes, without being forced into unwind decisions driven by liquidity constraints.”
Maintaining pricing is another issue in such a market, but Cheverall revealed that CMC’s proprietary trading algorithm allowed it to maintain competitive spreads throughout the volatility, and that preserved the ability to internalise and offset flow efficiently across clients.
“Alongside execution quality, there was a marked increase in client requests for contextual information, covering the reasons behind the price moves, the geopolitical and macro factors at play, and the practical impact on holding costs,” he continued. “While this is still being borne out, clearly we have seen the most extreme volatility around precious metals, which was driven by the directional nature of flow that has not really changed.”
“However, since the end of the year, or since the start of the year, clients have diversified into other assets as other macro factors have played out, typically on a natural basis.”
Many brokers, meanwhile, revealed their record trading volumes for the first three months of 2026. Interestingly, gold trading remained dominant even after the rally until January, even as the metal dropped from its peak.
The demand has caught the attention of CMC as well, as the broker recently launched weekend trading of gold. “Weekend trading is a thing that is here to stay,” the UK Head of CMC continued. “Prior to gold, we had launched weekend crypto products, and really, the arrival of 24/5 or 24/7 markets is here. We will continue to expand our offerings so that clients can trade at weekends if they wish to.”
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“Technology Is Moving Faster than Regulation”
CMC also floated its plans to launch a super app by integrating traditional finance, decentralised finance, payments, and banking within one platform. Although the initial app has already been rolled out, the company must address regulatory challenges, especially when it comes to TradFi and DeFi integration.
“The biggest challenge is that technology is moving faster than regulation,” said Cheverall. “Although there is some clearly defined framework, there is not a clearly defined multi-asset framework.”
Indeed, MiCA, for instance, will only cover crypto assets, but, he elaborated, “we have defined frameworks around best execution and market abuse, and where DeFi is decentralised by design, this raises questions around accountability and oversight, which regulators are still hoping to address. In the UK and EU, key issues include regulatory classification. So, if you take tokens as an example of a DeFi product, they fall under existing securities or derivative rules.”
Furthermore, according to Cheverall, custody and client protection regulations must ensure assets are safeguarded when interacting with decentralised protocols such as blockchain, while KYC and AML requirements mean firms have to apply the same financial crime controls and standards in DeFi from an operational responsibility perspective.
“It is important to identify who is accountable when products are automated or governed by DAOs,” he added. “Frameworks like MiCA are there to govern evolving crypto regimes… but there is a big gap in applying those standards to TradFi products.”
Despite the challenges, he believes that CMC’s ambitions to unify all trading applications are justified as the company has both a markets business and an investment business.
CMC, meanwhile, is also trying to innovate with its products. One of the recently launched products is Spectre, which offers non-leveraged spread betting products. Although the key selling point of spread betting products, under normal circumstances, is the ability to receive leverage, CMC is highlighting the tax-free nature of its non-leveraged offerings.
“It is a product that sits alongside our other spread bet and CFD products, so it is not something that exists by itself,” Cheverall elaborated. “The benefits of the fully funded spread bet products are that there are no financing or holding costs, and no margin calls. You get the normal tax efficiency with this product, such as no capital gains tax or stamp duty, and really it is designed for longer-term positions because there are no holding costs.”
“However, clients will choose to interact with that product as they wish. Some clients might wish to use it as a more active investment tool, and some clients as a more passive tool. The product is really there by design to meet their needs, and it is just another version of an innovation which CMC offers.”
Notably, Spectre was initially available only to professional clients in the United Kingdom and has recently been expanded to retail as well, and, according to Cheverall, demand for it is already “strong”. “We launched a campaign at the end of last year, and I think in one quarter it drove more traffic to CMC's website than we had seen in any previous quarter,” he added.
The tax-efficiency selling point of the product, however, only makes sense in the UK and Ireland.
“In the Next Five Years There Will Be Fewer but Larger Brokers”
As for the future of the CFDs industry, Cheverall believes that “brokers like CMC are going to be busy building ecosystems that capture all products and all client types.” This can already be seen in the broker’s aggressive product expansion.
“Future winners in our space will focus on tech delivery via API, partner integrations, and scalable back-end systems,” he added. “This not only supports retail clients, it supports institutional clients and fintech partners, and allows us and others to expand globally without a heavy local presence.”
“CFDs will evolve naturally alongside digital asset derivatives as TradFi and DeFi get closer together. I would say in the next five years there will be fewer but larger, technologically sophisticated brokers in the UK and the rest of the world, and CMC will be one of them.”
