Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
One of Canada’s financial regulators, the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) has issued a warning against the IQ Option binary options broker.
The reason for the warning is that IQ Option and its parent company IQ Option Europe Ltd. are not registered to trade in or advise on securities or exchange contracts in British Columbia. “We urge BC residents to exercise caution when dealing with firms that are not registered to trade or advise in BC,” urges the BCSC.
Unlike any other federal state, Canada lacks a federal regulator and has separate financial oversight bodies for each province. As a general rule, the brokers need a license from each separate regulator.
IQ Option Europe is licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) to provide investment and ancillary services in the European Economic Area (EEA – EU states, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein) and cross border services to countries outside the EU – Australia, Canada, China, New Zealand, Signapore, South Africa, South Korea, Russia and Ukraine. IQ Option Europe is also registered by UK’s FCA, authorized by Italy’s Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB) and regulated by the French Financial Agents Register (Regafi).
According to its website in 2015 IQ Option had 3 450 000 clients from 36 countries with an average of 1 million trades per day and an average trading trading volume of $100 million per month. It also has an affiliate program with 12 000 members.
Recently BCSC warned against another binary options brokers – Binexmarkets, as well as Option Orbit, LBinary, ZenithOptions and the equity firm Tain Capital.
