A London firm gets asked harder questions than most. Not by clients, by everyone else. The bank wants to know how client money is segregated in the ledger. The auditor wants an export nobody edited. The compliance officer wants the financial promotions on the site to match what the platform actually does, and wants to prove it a year later. Software that cannot answer those questions creates work for people who are expensive.
SINGUARD builds and operates three products: the eTrader trading platform with its own market data feed, the Broker CRM and the Prop Firm CRM. We are a software company. We are not a broker, a bank, a payment institution or an adviser, and we hold no UK permissions of any kind.
Who this is for in London
Established CFD brokers replacing a legacy stack they have outgrown. Smaller authorised firms that want a terminal their clients will use on a phone rather than a desktop build from 2010. And prop firms, which in the UK sit in an unsettled position: many are structured around simulated accounts precisely so they are not doing regulated investment business, and the boundary is being examined more closely every year. If that is your model, read where prop firm regulation is heading and take your own legal advice, because we give none.
The regulatory backdrop
The Financial Conduct Authority authorises and supervises firms carrying out regulated activities in the UK. For a retail CFD business that means conduct rules, capital and client money requirements, the financial promotions regime, appropriateness assessment, negative balance protection and leverage limits carried over from the EU intervention measures and kept in the UK rulebook after Brexit. Our FCA licence explainer covers the application mechanics and the post-Brexit rules covers what changed for firms serving clients across the Channel.
That is description only. We take no part in authorisation, we do not assess your permissions and we never contact the FCA on your behalf. Where it touches the software is specific and practical: category-aware leverage settings, negative balance protection applied at account level, appropriateness records held against the client file, and reporting exports a compliance function can actually use. Transaction reporting is a good example of a requirement that is trivial if the data model was built for it and painful if it was not.
SINGUARD has no office, entity, licence, registration or staff in London or the United Kingdom. We are a software vendor serving firms in this market and the team travels here for industry events. Licensing, client money and compliance stay entirely with your firm.
What we deliver
eTrader is a web and mobile terminal: charting, order entry, alerts, an economic calendar and a data feed included in the package rather than contracted separately. The Broker CRM handles onboarding and KYC review, client categorisation, account groups, per instrument spread and swap markup, deposits, withdrawals behind an approval queue, affiliate tracking and a live exposure view. The Prop Firm CRM handles challenge products, the rules engine, breach evaluation, certificates, leaderboards and payouts.
All of it is hosted and maintained by us. Once your firm's own licensing, banking and paperwork are in place, we go live within 24 hours, on your domain and under your brand. That timeline is ours to keep; the authorisation timeline is not, and we will never put a number on it.
Payments and banking for a UK firm
UK firms have the easiest domestic rails in this list. Faster Payments settles in seconds, open banking deposits push the client straight through their own bank app, and card approval rates for UK issuers are better than almost anywhere. The friction appears at the edges: banking a CFD business still takes work, client money accounts have their own requirements, and clients outside the UK need rails that Faster Payments does not reach. Open banking payments and client fund segregation are the two pieces most relevant here.
| Operating detail | What London firms typically run |
|---|---|
| Deposit rails | Open banking and Faster Payments first, cards second, e-wallets for overseas clients |
| Client languages | English primarily, then Spanish, Polish, Arabic and Mandarin depending on the book |
| Support hours | UK time, covering the London open and the New York overlap in one shift |
| Common structure | UK entity for domestic clients, separate entity for markets the permissions do not reach |
Time zones and why London still matters operationally
The London session carries the deepest FX liquidity of the day and overlaps New York for four hours, which is the window where most retail volume actually happens. A desk sitting in that time zone covers its own busiest hours without night staffing, and the daily rollover at the broker's server time falls conveniently outside them. Firms here usually keep compliance and risk in house, run sales locally, and outsource platform and infrastructure, which is the arrangement we are built for.
Talking to us
Alex Onta built eTrader with design work from Roman Onta and leads the platform. Alex Onta and Roman Onta built the Broker CRM and the Prop Firm CRM together and handle compliance, payments and corporate structuring questions between them. Book a call or text us and one of them takes it. Bring the migration questions and the exit questions; those are the ones worth asking a vendor first.
Related markets: Cyprus for an EU-facing entity alongside a UK one, and Dubai for firms adding a Gulf office. Everything else sits on the locations page.
Where SINGUARD is based, and where we meet firms in London
All of the software, the contracts and the policies come from SGHK Softwares Limited in Hong Kong, the holding company that builds and licenses eTrader and both CRMs. The team works out of Dubai, where both Executive Directors, Alex Onta and Roman Onta, live for most of the year, and our licensed UAE entity is SINGUARD GLOBAL FZC in Ajman Free Zone. We hold no office or licence in United Kingdom, and none is needed: the platform is delivered and managed from our own clustered servers, so a firm in London runs exactly what a firm anywhere else runs, and your licence, your client money and your compliance obligations stay entirely with your own entity.
Being in Dubai keeps the team on the industry circuit and within easy reach of London for calls and meetings, in a time zone that overlaps most of the trading world.
In person, the place to find us is the industry circuit. The team attends Forex Expo Dubai and the other major shows, wearing the SINGUARD and eTrader shirts, and you can walk up without an appointment, ask for a live demo of the terminal and both CRMs, and talk to the Executive Directors directly in English, Italian, Romanian or Russian. See where to find us at the expo.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does SINGUARD have a London office?
No. SINGUARD holds no office, entity, licence, registration or staff in London or anywhere in the United Kingdom. We are a software company serving firms based there, and the team travels to London for industry events. Your FCA permissions belong to your firm alone.
What does the FCA cover for a trading firm in London?
The Financial Conduct Authority authorises and supervises firms carrying out regulated investment activities in the UK, including conduct rules, capital and client money requirements, financial promotions rules and reporting. Whether your model requires authorisation is a question for your own legal advisers.
Can SINGUARD help with an FCA application?
No. We supply software only and take no part in any authorisation process. What we can do is make sure the platform and CRM are configured and ready to go live the moment your own permissions and banking are in place.
Does the platform support UK client categorisation and appropriateness records?
Yes. The Broker CRM holds client categories, appropriateness test outcomes and per category leverage settings with an audit trail. How a London firm applies those settings is its own regulatory judgement, not ours.
Related Reading
The FCA licence explained
How UK authorisation works and what a CFD firm has to demonstrate.
RegulationUK rules after Brexit
What changed for firms serving clients on both sides of the Channel.
RegulationClient fund segregation
How client money is held apart from a firm's own balance and why it is checked.