What an FSCA licence gives you and how to check it

What the authorisation is

To provide financial services to clients in South Africa, a company is authorised by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority as a Financial Services Provider (FSP) under the FAIS Act. The FSCA has held this mandate since 1 April 2018, when it replaced the FSB.

Intermediating and being the counterparty are licensed separately. A firm that issues the forex or CFD contract to the client, rather than passing the order on, needs a second authorisation on top of the FSP one: OTC Derivative Provider (ODP), introduced by the regulations to the Financial Markets Act in 2018.

The authorisation carries the FSCA's Fit and Proper standards for the company and its key individuals, anti-money-laundering reporting under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, and client money held on bank accounts separate from the company's own. The FSP number is public: the number and the entity name from a site footer are looked up in the FSP register, which shows whether the authorisation is active and which services it covers.

What the authorisation does not include

South Africa has no state scheme that reimburses clients when a broker fails: the UK runs FSCS at up to £85,000 per client, Cyprus runs ICF at up to €20,000. If the company collapses, the segregation requirement is what stands. The licence does add a dispute route: an unresolved complaint about a service rendered under the FAIS Act goes to the FAIS Ombud, which can award compensation.

Tier 1/2/3: an unofficial scale

There is no official “first-tier regulator”: Tier 1/2/3 is a convention the industry uses to group regulators by strictness of requirements and quality of supervision. This site uses the same split in its broker rating. Where the FSCA sits on that scale, and what each regulator in the shortlist can do: in its card on the Regulators page.

Brand and company: whose licence is yours

Every broker in the shortlist has an FSCA-authorised entity. It does not follow that your trading account is opened with that entity. In South Africa Exness onboards clients through Exness ZA (Pty) Ltd, an FSCA-authorised FSP with number 51024, while the account itself is contracted with Exness (SC) Ltd under FSA Seychelles. The rules and the protection are set by the licence of the company in the client agreement: it is named in the agreement and in the footer of the broker's site, and in the broker cards the licence applicable to South African clients is flagged separately.

Step 1: a written complaint to the broker

Any dispute starts with a formal complaint to the broker itself: via a ticket or the support email, with order numbers, event times and screenshots. A chat with support doesn't count as a complaint: a dispute that may go higher needs a written trail. The FAIS Ombud takes a complaint only after the client has tried to resolve it with the company and the company has failed to resolve it within six weeks, so the date the complaint was sent is part of the record. The complaint procedure and response timelines are set in the client agreement.

Step 2: the FAIS Ombud

The Office of the Ombud for Financial Services Providers resolves complaints about financial services out of court, under the FAIS Act. A complaint is lodged through the portal at faisombud.co.za or by email to [email protected], free for the complainant.

Compensation for financial prejudice: up to R3.5 million per complaint. The Ombud Council Rules of 2024 raised the limit from R800,000 when they came into operation on 1 July 2024, and they are not retrospective: the higher limit applies to complaints received on or after that date. Costs and interest fall outside the limit. The limit is exceeded only if the responding party agrees in writing.

Two conditions decide whether the route is open. The office does not investigate a complaint where the complainant became aware, or ought to have become aware, of the act more than three years before the complaint was received. And the complaint runs against the company that rendered the service, the one named in the client agreement, not the brand on the website. The channel and the powers of each regulator in the shortlist: in its card on the Regulators page.

If the Ombud route is exhausted

What's left is the court of the jurisdiction where the serving company is registered. For a local FSP that is South African law. For an account contracted with an offshore entity that is a foreign legal system, language and lawyers. The amount of real protection is fixed at the moment the broker is chosen, by the licence of the company that signs the client. Once a dispute has arisen, nothing more can be added to it.