Open the legal page of a small broker and look at the entity line. A company number, an address in Roseau, Castries or The Valley, and a sentence saying the company is registered under the relevant business companies act. Then look for a licence number. Often there is not one, and where there is, it is worth checking what it authorises, because in these three jurisdictions the thing being registered is usually the company, not the financial activity.
Three registries, three supervisors, one confusion
Dominica supervises non bank financial services through its Financial Services Unit, which sits under the Ministry of Finance and oversees the categories the country does license, such as money services and offshore banking, alongside anti money laundering supervision. St Lucia runs its international and non bank financial sector through the Financial Services Regulatory Authority. Anguilla has a Financial Services Commission with its own registry and supervisory functions. All three are real bodies with real registers.
Dominica and St Lucia also sit inside the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, where the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank supervises licensed commercial banks and the Eastern Caribbean Securities Regulatory Commission oversees the regional securities market and its licensed intermediaries. Anguilla is in the currency union too. So there is genuine financial supervision in the region. What there is not, in any of the three, is a mainstream retail contract for difference licensing regime of the sort a European or Australian broker holds. A firm cannot simply apply for a leveraged retail trading licence in Anguilla the way it applies for one in Cyprus, and if a corporate agent implies otherwise, ask for the statutory instrument and the register entry.
Requirements in all three jurisdictions have changed, including economic substance and beneficial ownership reporting introduced across the Caribbean. Nothing here is advice. Instruct counsel in the specific island before you form anything.
What incorporation actually buys
A business company in these jurisdictions gives you a legal person, a bank account application, a contracting party and a name to put on terms of business. It is fast and inexpensive relative to a licensing process. It gives you no capital requirement, no supervised client money rules, no reporting obligation to a securities regulator, no complaints scheme and no compensation scheme. For a client, that means the money sits in the operating company's own account unless the firm has voluntarily arranged otherwise, and that voluntary arrangement is exactly what client fund segregation exists to make compulsory elsewhere.
It also gives the client no way to verify anything. When a firm holds a licence, a prospective client can look it up in the supervisor's public register and see the permissions. When a firm holds only a company number, the register confirms the company exists and nothing more. Teach people the difference and they stop being fooled by a licence number that turns out to be a registry file number, which is one of the patterns in broker licence registers.
How the file reads to a bank or a PSP
Compliance onboarding is a scoring exercise. The reviewer takes the country, the entity type, the ownership chain and the product, and each one moves a dial. Small Caribbean jurisdictions with large registries and small resident populations score high on country risk because the volume of formations relative to real economic activity is a known typology. An unlicensed vehicle scores high on entity risk. Leveraged retail trading scores high on product risk because of chargeback behaviour and consumer harm history. Three high scores is a decline before anyone reads the business plan, and the applicant is rarely told why. Our note on know your business checks lists what the reviewer is actually collecting.
Card acquiring adds a second gate. The schemes classify trading merchants into categories that carry heightened monitoring, and an acquirer that takes such a merchant registers it and prices in reserves. If chargebacks cross the monitoring thresholds, the acquirer remediates or terminates, and a firm with one acquirer and no fallback simply stops taking deposits that week. Liquidity providers apply their own test: their regulator expects them to know their counterparty, and an unlicensed shell with nominee officers is a counterparty they can decline without argument.
The marketing gate that catches everyone
Advertising platforms restrict financial services categories and generally require the advertiser to declare an authorisation, or a recognised exemption, for the country being targeted. A Dominican or Anguillan company has nothing to declare. App store review of trading applications applies a comparable standard. Founders who assume they will buy traffic first and worry about paperwork later discover that the paperwork is the gate on the traffic.
There is also the client side jurisdiction question, which is the one that generates enforcement. Registering in St Lucia says nothing about whether you may solicit a resident of Germany or Australia. That is decided by German and Australian law, and the answer for retail leveraged products is usually no. Compare the position with the licensed offshore regimes covered in offshore broker licences, where at least there is a supervisor, a rulebook and a register entry to point at.
When these registrations make sense
They make sense as holding or intellectual property vehicles inside a properly structured group, as contracting entities for business to business services that are not regulated activities, and occasionally as a first step while a real licence application runs elsewhere. They do not make sense as the licensing answer for a retail brokerage. Firms that use them that way spend their first year fighting payment providers rather than building a product, and their clients carry risk they were never told about.
Whatever entity you land on, the technology has to hold up: onboarding with proper identity and source of funds evidence, per client audit trails, segregated ledgers so client balances are traceable, and a portal that shows the correct legal entity and disclosures. SINGUARD supplies that software. The licence is a legal question, and leveraged trading remains high risk for the client no matter which registry issued the certificate.
"If the only document a firm can show me is a certificate of incorporation, then what I am looking at is a company, and companies do not hold client money safely."
— Roman Onta, Executive Director, SINGUARD
Key Takeaways
- Dominica's FSU, St Lucia's FSRA and Anguilla's FSC are real supervisors, but none runs a mainstream retail CFD licensing regime.
- A business company gives a legal person and nothing else: no capital rule, no client money rule, no register a client can check.
- Country, entity and product risk scores stack, and three elevated scores usually means a silent decline at the bank or PSP.
- Registering in the Caribbean says nothing about whether you may solicit clients in a regulated market.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I get a forex broker licence in Anguilla or Dominica?
These jurisdictions license defined financial activities such as money services and offshore banking, and they maintain registers of what they authorise. A mainstream retail contract for difference licence of the sort issued in Cyprus or Australia is not a standard product there. If an agent offers one, ask for the governing legislation and the public register entry, and check both with local counsel.
Is an IBC certificate the same as being regulated?
No. A certificate of incorporation proves a company exists. Regulation means a supervisor has authorised a specific activity, set capital and conduct requirements, and can inspect and sanction the firm. Clients can tell the difference by searching the supervisor's register rather than the company registry.
Why do payment providers reject Caribbean registered brokers?
Because the risk model stacks. Jurisdictions with large formation registries relative to their resident economy score high on country risk, an unlicensed entity scores high on entity risk, and leveraged trading is a high risk merchant category with heavy chargeback monitoring. Providers decline files that score high on all three rather than take on the monitoring burden.
About the Author
Roman Onta is an Executive Director at SINGUARD. He builds the Prop Firm CRM, the Broker CRM, Scalegram and CopySignals side by side with his brother Alex Onta, and he helped on the design of eTrader, the division Alex built and leads. His ground is worldwide payment processing, AML compliance and the corporate structures brokers are built on, work the two of them carry together, shaped by executive roles in the UAE and international corporates. He lives and works in Dubai for most of the year. Meet the executive duo leading Singuard's five divisions.