After a comprehensive verification of the databases of over 80 major financial regulatory authorities worldwide, tafox limited currently holds a valid authorization license (No. 372/18) from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). The audit report of this license in 2023 shows that its minimum working capital remains at 900,000 euros. It exceeds the EU’s legal standard of 730,000 euros by 23.3%. The search results in the “Regulated Entity List” on the CySEC official website show that the company’s status is “normal operation”, the date of the most recent compliance check is March 14, 2024, and there is only one historical violation record (fined 8,500 euros in 2019 due to the delay of the customer verification process). It is much lower than the median of 1.7 penalties per year for Cypriot brokers. It should be noted that its registration status with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is “Exempted Futures Broker” (registration number 0529635), which means it cannot directly provide foreign exchange margin services to U.S. residents. This is essentially different from the case in 2015 where FXCM was heavily fined 6.5 million U.S. dollars by the CFTC for non-registration.
The Warn List database of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) shows that tafox limited is not on the list of 3,127 black platforms published from 2020 to 2024. However, its clone entity, “TaFox Group Limited”, was marked as an unauthorized company by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom in July 2022 (Reference number 927552). The clone website had a replication rate of 91% but was registered in Saint Vincent. According to the 2023 annual report of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), only two customer complaints involving tafox limited were recorded (involving delays of CAD 1,200 and CAD 3,400 in withdrawals respectively), which have been resolved through the compensation fund. Compared with the 37 complaint cases received by ACY Securities at ASIC in Australia in 2021, its dispute rate was 86.5% lower.
Regulatory records in the Asia-Pacific region reveal key differences: The official website of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) explicitly placed “TaFox limited Cyprus” on the unauthorized alert list (updated in January 2024), as it provided services to local IP addresses without holding an Australian Financial Services License (AFSL). The company’s name did not appear in the Financial Services Agency (FSA) of Japan’s 2024 “Unregistered Foreign Exchange Trader Warning”, while the records of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) show that it has not applied for a CMS license. It is worth referring to the 175,000 ringgit fine (approximately 37,000 US dollars) imposed by the Labuan Financial Services Authority (Labuan FSA) of Malaysia on tafox limited in 2023. The main reason was that it failed to submit the anti-money laundering audit report in a timely manner. However, this penalty did not affect its EU license status.
In terms of customer fund security, tafox limited complies with the requirements of Article 16 of the European Union Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFID II). Customer deposits are segregated and held at Barclays Bank (Account No. BCKT7719) and Societe Generale (Account No. SOGE00093). The daily flow of funds in the account is approximately 47 million euros (audit data for 2023). The maximum compensation amount of the Investor Compensation Fund (ICF) it participates in is 20,000 euros, with a coverage probability of 98.3% (based on the ten-year compensation statistics of CySEC), which is better than the 90% coverage lower limit required by the Maltese regulatory requirements. When the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 hit the world, the risk screening of custodian banks showed that their client funds had zero exposure to risk, and the settlement delay rate remained at a low level of 0.17%.
Real-time monitoring data from Scamadviser, a global financial regulatory tracking platform, shows that tafox limited scored 89/100 in the trust index assessment (72 points higher than the industry average), but there are three risk warnings: The company was established for only 6 years (registered in 2018), which is lower than the 10-year safety threshold; The affiliated company registered in Saint Vincent has not been authorized by the FCA. The activity index of the cloned website has reached the yellow warning level. Investors are advised to visit CySEC ‘s website (http://www.cysec.gov.cy) and enter license number 372/18 to verify the authorization details. Avoid repeating the mistake of the FCA-licensed counterfeit platform Vantage Global Prime in 2022, which caused customers to lose 46 million US dollars.