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BDSwiss Group Announcement on the Provisional Suspension of its Services in the UK
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In light of the latest FCA announcement and its decision to suspend BDSwiss Group services in the UK, we would like to confirm that BDSwiss Group has been in close communication with the FCA over the past weeks. While we were not given any notice and were not made aware of specific client complaints filed with the FCA — which would have allowed us to proceed in rectifying the matter prior to this decision — we respect the FCA’s decision and have worked diligently to comply with its requirements. The BDSwiss Group has suspended all promotional, marketing and onboarding activities towards UK audiences back in mid-July, and after giving clients a proper notice period proceeded to terminate existing UK accounts. BDSwiss is also in the process of submitting a revised written representation statement to the FCA by August 12, 2021.
We would like to underline that while we have implemented strict marketing guidelines and have clearly communicated our Group’s code of conduct to our Affiliate and Introducing Brokers, it appears that an isolated group of Partners may have intentionally breached our agreements when it comes to their communications. We do not condone such behaviour and have already identified and terminated our agreements with these individuals. To ensure that we prevent such incidents from occurring again in the future, we have also launched an internal investigation into our global network of partners.
With regards to the FCA announcement and the use of our group website domain, we would like to clarify that all visitors and potential clients are presented with all brand entities and regulators, they are prompted to register under their own jurisdiction, and are explicitly warned when attempting to register under a different jurisdiction.
What is more, the BDSwiss group website has always maintained clear risk warnings with regards to the risks associated with trading leveraged products under all its entities and jurisdictions. At BDSwiss, we emphasise transparency and regulation and while we offer leveraged products, we have always clearly communicated all the risks involved to our clients. These isolated incidents of malpractice by certain Affiliates conflicted with our client-centric approach which focuses more on transparency, education and support. In fact, we conducted an independent customer survey by third-party data and intelligence company Edelman, focusing on our active and churned UK clients in late 2020, and the findings indicated that 70% of our UK-based clients at the time reported high satisfaction with the services provided by BDSwiss.
Executive Director and Chief Compliance Officer at BDSwiss, Katalina Michael has commented: “I want to stress that we do not condone such behaviour, as a BDSwiss Group we already had strict partner guidelines in place and we identified internally and terminated agreements with individual affiliates in the past. We respect the FCA’s decision, following the complaints filed, we have complied with suspending our services and terminating partners operating in the region and we have also launched an additional internal investigation of our existing network of partners. This incident does not represent the integrity of our operations as a Group, as all our entities maintain full transparency and compliance when it comes to our products and services. BDSwiss Group will continue to work closely with regulators to find the best solution moving forward. ”
We remain committed to offering our clients a strong value proposition and we are determined to view this latest restriction as an opportunity to further improve our partnership programmes, products, and services. We remain in constant communication and collaboration with the FCA and the CySEC aiming to find the best way forward. We hope that we can welcome UK clients to our platforms in the near future upon the acquisition of an FCA license.