Despite financial market regulators' best efforts to combat unlicensed investment firms, their struggle seems never-ending. The Spanish CNMV has just reported that scammers have once again attempted to impersonate popular retail trading brands. Additionally, the latest warning list includes several entities operating in the country without proper licenses.
CNMV Alerts Against StoneX and IG Group Clones
According to today's (Monday) update from CNMV, the Spanish financial markets regulator, the market watchdog has added ten new entities to its warning list.
Among them, "Finance IG," offering services through the websites finance-ig.com and financeig.com, stands out as a clone of the popular, publicly traded London-based firm IG Group, known throughout Europe and worldwide.
The warning list also includes a clone of the US-based company StoneX, offering services through the website stonexly.com/es.
Unfortunately, attempts to impersonate popular brands are common. A few months ago, CNMV also warned against a firm pretending to be the popular social trading platform eToro.
According to a survey conducted by Finance Magnates and FXStreet, retail traders consider broker and signal provider clones to be the biggest threat in the industry. However, conversations with representatives of frequently cloned firms reveal that the practice is so widespread that effectively defending against it is very challenging.
Eight Unlicensed Entities Alongside Clones
In addition to the two clones warned about by CNMV, the update also included information on eight entities operating without proper authorization in the Spanish market.
Among these entities were Fusionlots, TD Markets, Rumlenomic, AMI Solutions, Aduent Capital, TCM Globals, and Trader Expertss:
"According to CNMV records, these institutions are not registered in the corresponding registry of this Commission and, therefore, are not authorized to provide investment services or other activities subject to the CNMV's supervision," CNMV explained.
This is another update to the Spanish regulator's warning list over the past month. In June, Finance Magnates reported that 8 unregistered FX/CFD brokers came under CNMV scrutiny.
Recently, CNMV also took an interest in Linq Capital, which offers trading with leverage up to 1000:1. The firm claims to be registered in the UK, in a city that doesn't actually exist. A few months earlier, the German BaFin also drew attention to its suspicious activities.
