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Forex deposits in Europe are on the increase, despite the ongoing regulatory changes concerning the forex industry within the EU, according to data about the forex deposits worldwide provided by private equity firm Kapital Wealth. The data is adjusted for GDP per capita and refers for December 2016.
Many of the top 10 countries with the highest forex deposits in December were EU member states, including Spain, France, the Netherlands, the UK and Germany.
“The data shows that despite the recent regulatory clampdown, the industry is very much relying on European Union member countries,” the company said.
An interesting fact is that companies appear to have preemptively targeted French and Dutch residents due to the impending advertising ban in these countries. In France, the online advertising of “highly speculative and risky financial contracts”, such as binary options, forex and contracts for difference (CFDs) with a leverage greater than 5:1 is prohibited. The Netherlands is also taking steps to ban the advertisement of risky investment instruments, including binary options, CFDs, futures and warrants.
Aside from Europe, forex deposits are also steadily growing in other markets, mainly in countries in the Middle East – Israel, the UAE and Qatar. All three countries were in the top five for markets with highest forex deposits.
Israel is leader by average amount of first deposits
Israeli traders placed the highest average amount of first-time deposits, according to Kapital Wealth’s data.
“This happens just as the country has formally introduced legislation that is going to forbid the marketing of products in and outside of the country for unregulated brokers. The steep changes to the Israeli industry are likely to affect future data releases materially,” Kapital Wealth noted.
African and Latin American countries were also in the top 10 by largest average first deposits in December. In Africa leaders were Kenya, Lesotho and Botswana while in in Latin America Ecuador, Brazil and Costa Rica were all in the leaders list.
According to Kapital Wealth, the challenges for the industry in Latin America, mainly related to payment processing, appear to be diminishing.
