FxPro broker in South Africa – weaknesses, shortcomings, and flaws

The thing with the “best broker in the world” is that anybody can claim such a name. The FxPro FX brokerage seems to be doing just that. While it is a relatively well-known brokerage globally, we do have our own suspicions and basis for evaluating brokers. Whether FxPro is up to part is currently up to debate on our team, and these are the most recent results of the debate that you will be reading right now.

Overall, the brokerage seems to have certain advantages over others. It does seem to have an interesting background and a rather reliable looking platform, which is definitely a positive for the company. Though we do not like to draw conclusions from the surface level information. Our team enjoys digging deep and looking for the truth behind the cover of innocence. Let us see the FxPro Forex broker stands up to the scrutiny.

The page

The page of the company is constructed like a powerpoint presentation. It is slightly minimalistic and aiming to direct your attention to the content available on the front page. Scrolling down feels like flipping through powerpoint slides showcasing why you should work with FxPro by offering you information that most, relatively large brokerages like to present to their potential clients. All of this is great, except it feels like a copy of one page or another we have already seen before. While we do not demand from all brokers to be extremely unique or outstanding in their designs, we do believe that they should have some kind of character that would separate them from the rest. Yet the FxPro review will not be using the seeming cloned nature of the website to lower the rating of the company. The website remains functional and is relatively easy to use. The information provided may sometimes seem useless, but navigation is simple and allows you to find most of the important information about the company easily. The website is offered in a large number of languages, which bodes well for the international users trying to start working with them. This also means they are trying to expand their markets. Either way a good sign.

Education and news

It seems like the broker does not directly offer any kind of educational resources to the potential client. This is not something we are necessarily excited about. We believe any broker that wants their users to achieve success will emphasize the importance of getting educated about the subjects of strategy, basic and advanced concepts of Forex and so on. Unfortunately, the lack of educational resources lowers the FxPro rating for us. On the other hand, the brokerage seems to offer a “newsroom”. Unfortunately, our excitement died down a little bit when we figured out that the only news the room reported was about the company. We appreciate the effort of this enterprise to keep their users up to date regarding any possible updates to the website. It would have been more efficient though to also have the ability to provide news regarding the market to their clients and educate them about the possible strategies and concepts of the market.

Communication

The website offers a number of ways to communicate with the company. One of the ways is to get a phone call from their support by giving the company your phone number. While it is understandable why you would need to give your information to a company so you can register with them, we have a bit of a policy against giving out our personal information for simple things such as support. Because of this, we decided to check what their online support offered. Simply pressing on the barely visible online support button on the right side of the screen redirected us to the FAQ page. No real online support then. So we tried giving the number away, but we didn’t get the call until a couple of hours later. Which is understandable, judging by how they might have a lot of clients, but still a little too late for our taste. The email support was slow as well, taking them up to a day to respond.

Fortunately, the website offers a way to navigate to the contact us page, where we were able to find online chat support. It was relatively fast replying to us within the ten-minute mark. Still, with the online chat not being readily available, we find ourselves thinking. So can FxPro be trusted to handle your problems in an immediate manner? Not always.

Company background

The enterprise, according to the information provided on the website, was founded in 2006. Since then they have been providing brokerage services almost globally. While this might be a good sign, since a long history might be a sign of a trustworthy nature, we are struggling with the speed of their growth, which seems rather slow. So far they have about eight hundred and fifty thousand monthly registered users. For a company that has existed for thirteen years, this might not be the optimal number. Compare this to other Forex brokerages around the world and you’ll see that this number is actually relatively low, especially for the time that the company has existed. Whether it is because the company does not market itself too much (which does not seem to be the case) or because the company has a regular and rather large exodus, is a question that’s bothering us right now. While this does not mean that FxPro fraud is possible, we still would like the question the quality and nature of their operation, especially judging the complications with their growth over the years.

Licensing

One piece of very good news about the company is the number of regulators that it is registered with. Currently, the website is boasting five financial regulatory bodies that it is registered and in compliance with. The long list of the regulatory bodies is also impressive because of its contents, containing the United Kingdom’s FCA, CySEC, FSCA, DFSA, and the Bahamas SCB. While boasting on their website is something a lot of brokers do, not a lot are able to provide licensing numbers for each of the licensing bodies they have listed. This is not the case with FxPro, who provide licensing numbers, each of which checks out with the regulatory bodies, This simply rules out any FxPro scam accusations as the fact they are registered with so many bodies makes them not only legitimate but unlike to commit any kind of nefarious activity as they would have a whole lot of fines to pay. And no Forex broker wants to pay fines and lower their margin of income.

Awards

The company boasts a large number of awards for the services it offers to its clients. Some of the awards come from the United Kingdom and name them as one of the best forex brokerages to exist. The others are more obscure, but most of them are easy to confirm. This increases the legitimacy of the company in our minds and brings positivity to the question “is FxPro legit”.

The Platforms and more

FxPro has a number of platforms they offer. The large selection of platforms is a welcome thing for most users, as each of them has their own demands and preferences. A minor thing to consider is all the support knowledge necessary for all of these platforms. Some users do report a bad experience with such platforms, but it has not been reported too often in the past, so it must not be a huge one.

The broker offers four platforms at the time of writing this. The MT4 and MT5 are each an individual, but a related platform, offering their own benefits to any user. Simplicity and customizability is definitely one thing that makes these two some of the most widely used platforms on the market. A good choice indeed. FxPro Ctrader is another trading platform offered by the broker and a definitely welcome option. This relatively modern platform has a very simple to read interface and is very intuitive in its use. Anyone of these platforms is a welcome choice for a trader, but the broker also offers an in-house developed FxPro Edge. This platform is very new, still in its beta stage, and frequently bugged out. While the company might be working on the further development of the tool, it is not necessarily capable of performing well for now which is why our team would recommend giving time to the broker to finalize their project before starting a full account with this platform. Otherwise, the FxPro opinion shared by the team is that it is definitely worth considering, even if it is not the best FX broker out there.

Spread

The spread of the company is relatively low, with the spread for most of the popular currencies being around 1 pip. This will be very attractive to beginner and small-scale traders. The company also claims that they charge no commission, which is a benefit for most beginner traders.

Account types

The company offers three account types: the live account, the professional account, and the VVIP account, as well as a demo account option. The most basic account grants access to all platforms and have a minimum deposit of 1500 ZAR, which is a relatively average amount of global brokerages. Though it seems this very basic account does come with deposit and withdrawal fees that do not get removed unless the trader buys the VIP account. The basic account also has access to lower leverage than the larger accounts, which is a bit of a shame, but understandable as the company tries to target higher net worth individuals with the advanced accounts. At least we know that FxPro scam is not a thing because of the way they work with their account types.

FxPro Withdrawal

The one big problem our team has with FxPro is the fact that these guys charge both deposit and withdrawal fees. Nobody likes fees in general and the fact that such charges are applied regularly make us feel a bit nervous. This tactic is usually applied by companies to keep the trader’s money on the account so that withdrawing does not cause them to lose a chunk of their cash. Fortunately, the withdrawals to go through, although they can take up to three days, which is a bit too slow for our taste, but better than any longer alternative.

And so

The final verdict for the company is that, hey it is not the best, but definitely not the worst either. While withdrawal fees and the processing time is a little annoying, the small spread, as well as the general sense of reliability make the company attractive. We hope to see the company become even more reliable in the future, so the FxPro reviews can get better. So far though, some issues persist, which is why the company does not score too high with us.