What is the Seychelles FSA Doing in Limassol?

If one walked the exhibition floor at the ground level of the iFX EXPO International in Limassol’s lush City of Dreams Mediterranean, one might be forgiven for doing a double-take at a booth that, much like the old Sesame Street song, was “not like the others.”

While the floor was a sea of liquidity providers, brokers, payments and so on, there sat the Financial Services Authority (FSA) of Seychelles: business cards stacked, representatives in suits and flyers ready.

Their presence in the heart of European regulation, just an hour and some change drive from CySEC's headquarters, did not go unnoticed.

A Good Offshore Plan

The numbers tell a compelling story. According to data from FM Intelligence, the Seychelles regulator has issued 1,042 licenses, with a substantial chunk (446) specifically in the capital markets and trading.

For the retail brokers in attendance, major, small and everything in between, the Seychelles FSA license (formally a Securities Dealer License) has become one of the industry’s favourite offshore plans.

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However, they are not the only offshore plan. Mauritius, in particular, has been increasingly positioning itself as an attractive hub for brokers, driven by reduced banking and payment friction alongside a supportive regulatory environment.

In this context, the FSA's booth might look a little less like a curiosity and more like a strategic placement. After all, this is not the first time the regulator has had a presence at an iFX Expo event.

Fertile Ground

This year's iFX Expo was thrumming with energy that made conversation a high-decibel exercise.

In the thick of the crowd, surely not everyone passing by the booth was already regulated by the FSA. It does not take a great leap to consider that the regulator did not travel almost 5,000 kilometres to the sun-drenched shores of the European industry simply to network with existing licensees.

Even in an age dominated by AI, one of the fundamental truths of the finance services industry still holds: putting a face to the name is still the most powerful move on the floor.

That is true for a broker, a bank, a payments provider, and, evidently, true for a regulator.