UP Fintech Holding, the company behind the Tiger Brokers app, fell into the red in the first quarter after Chinese securities regulators imposed roughly $59.7 million in fines and confiscated gains across several of its units.

The Nasdaq-listed broker (NASDAQ: TIGR) reported a net loss of $26.9 million for the three months to March 31, a reversal from the $30.4 million profit it posted a year earlier. Revenue moved the other way, rising 26.3% to $154.9 million.

China Fine Overshadows a 26% Revenue Jump at Tiger Brokers

The penalty came from the Beijing bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, which on May 22 ordered the confiscation of illegal income and levied administrative fines totaling about 411 million yuan.

Regulators said certain Tiger Brokers subsidiaries had run an unlicensed cross-border securities business and carried out illegal fund and futures activity in mainland China. The split was roughly 308 million yuan in fines and 103 million yuan in confiscated income.

The charge lands weeks after a far larger one against rival Futu Holdings. In mid-May, the CSRC and its Shenzhen bureau told Futu it faced proposed fines of about $271 million over similar accusations, namely that its entities handled securities trading, fund sales and futures business on the mainland without the required approvals.

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The same enforcement wave reached other names. Chinese authorities flagged action against a New Zealand unit of Tiger Brokers and a Hong Kong arm of LongBridge Securities, a sign regulators are tightening the screws on platforms that route mainland clients into overseas markets.

Both Tiger and Futu have spent years operating in this grey zone. They are registered in Hong Kong, but the "one country, two systems" framework does not extend licensing to the mainland, and Beijing has never issued licenses for cross-border online brokerage.

The two firms were first warned by the CSRC back in 2022, and have been pushing growth toward Singapore and other markets ever since.

Operating Numbers Hold Up Beneath the Charge

Strip out the fine and the picture looks different. The penalty sat in the "others, net" line, which swung to a $64.1 million expense and pulled pretax results into a $16.5 million loss. Without it, the broker would have stayed comfortably profitable.

Commissions rose 15.3% to $67.2 million on heavier trading, while interest income climbed 19.8% to $64.5 million. Other revenue, which the firm tied to its wealth management push, jumped to $20.7 million from $7.9 million.

Costs grew faster. Total operating expenses rose 32.9% to $89.2 million, with the staff bill up 38.5% as the company said it added headcount and accrued higher bonuses to support its overseas expansion.

Singapore and Hong Kong Drive Client Growth

UP Fintech Fintech Financial Technology (fintech) is defined as ay technology that is geared towards automating and enhancing the delivery and application of financial services. The origin of the term fintechs can be traced back to the 1990s where it was primarily used as a back-end system technology for renowned financial institutions. However, it has since grown outside the business sector with an increased focus upon consumer services.What Purpose Do Fintechs Serve?The main purpose of fintechs would be to suppl Financial Technology (fintech) is defined as ay technology that is geared towards automating and enhancing the delivery and application of financial services. The origin of the term fintechs can be traced back to the 1990s where it was primarily used as a back-end system technology for renowned financial institutions. However, it has since grown outside the business sector with an increased focus upon consumer services.What Purpose Do Fintechs Serve?The main purpose of fintechs would be to suppl Read this Term added 28,900 funded accounts in the quarter, "with great majority of which came from Singapore and Hong Kong markets," Chairman and Chief Executive Wu Tianhua said. Total funded accounts reached 1.28 million, up 11.3% from a year earlier.

Net money coming in hit $2.9 billion, which the company said marked its first quarter ever above $2 billion in net inflows from consolidated retail accounts. Singapore has become a core market for the broker, where it switched on trading for local retirement savings accounts last year.

Client assets told a rockier story. A market pullback across financial, technology and consumer stocks wiped out $4.9 billion in mark-to-market value, pushing total assets down 3.2% from the prior quarter to $58.9 billion, though they were still up 28.4% on the year.

Wu said Nasdaq's second-quarter rebound has since recovered those paper losses on a quarter-to-date basis.

Tiger AI Adds Anthropic's Claude to Its Lineup

On the product side, the broker reworked its Tiger AI assistant into a "Multi-Agent" setup that splits search, analysis, forecasting and risk control into separate agents, and added a futures-focused agent.

The company also said Tiger AI now plugs in Anthropic's Claude model alongside its existing two, turning it into what it called a "triple-model intelligent assistant."

The firm has leaned on AI branding for a while. It launched the industry's first AI assistant, TigerGPT, in 2023, and last year became the first global broker to wire in China's DeepSeek model.

It also turned on Hong Kong index options and a TWAP order type for options during the quarter.

IPO Pipeline and a $50 Million Buyback

The corporate desk stayed busy. UP Fintech underwrote 10 Hong Kong listings in the quarter, including AI developers MiniMax and Zhipu AI, and worked on two US SPAC deals.

It said subscriptions for Hong Kong IPOs on its platform have topped HK$1 trillion so far this year, while its employee stock plan business added 42 clients to reach 790.

Alongside the results, the board approved a buyback of up to $50 million in shares over 12 months starting June 1, funded from cash on hand. The move follows a record 2025 for the group, when annual revenue crossed $612 million.

Cash and term deposits ended the quarter at $598.1 million, down from $793.1 million three months earlier.