Financial Commission
Representative of the Financial Commission
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The Financial Commission is the first independent dispute resolution organization for the Forex and CFD market.
Since 2013, when the Commission was founded, the organization has helped hundreds or traders resolve over 1,600 disputes with their Forex and CFD trading providers with over $2.3M awarded to traders.
To understand where the Financial Commission fits in to the global retail Forex industry, let’s take a look at what services the organization provides for traders and brokers.
Since 2013, when the Commission was founded, the organization has helped hundreds or traders resolve over 1,600 disputes with their Forex and CFD trading providers with over $2.3M awarded to traders.
To understand where the Financial Commission fits in to the global retail Forex industry, let’s take a look at what services the organization provides for traders and brokers.
What is the Financial Commission?
Financial Commission is a self-regulatory organization (SRO) and is not a governmental entity nor designated by any sovereign nation.
The Commission’s main goal is to help Forex and CFD traders defend their rights as customers when it comes to trading. In the process of reviewing disputes and issues from traders, the Financial Commission ensures that traders and brokers are getting their disputes resolved in a quick and efficient manner while making sure they walk away with a well-founded answer, thus contributing to their overall knowledge about Forex and CFDs.
The three pillars that uphold Financial Commission’s mission statement are market transparency, efficient dispute resolution, and market participant education.
How is the Commission helping traders?
One of the key differences from designated governmental regulatory bodies and other SROs is that the Commission’s services for Forex traders are absolutely free. Customers of broker members are able to file disputes with no cost to them. Moreover, the Commission regularly receives inquiries from the general trading community and assists all traders with their questions.
It is no surprise that the Commission has become a familiar organization for traders around the world. According to its 2017 annual report, the number of complaints received from non-member broker clients in 2017 tripled as compared to 2016. For FY2018 the Commission projects the total number of processed complaints to be 45% higher compared to 2017.
Given the size and scope of the Forex market, the Commission has seen a significant increase over the years in the amount of compensation sought by customers who file disputes with the Commission. This has made the work of the Dispute Resolution Committee (DRC) ever so important, as the facts of each dispute have to be carefully considered by Committee members in order to provide a determination for compensation. In 2017, the amount of compensations awarded increased exponentially to $1,564,700, a nearly 1000% rise compared Year-over-Year (YoY) from $157,326 in 2016.
Efficiency over regulators
Even as the number of filed complaints with the Commission increased by nearly 500% rising to 764 for the calendar year in 2017 (or more than 63 per month on average), the Financial Commission demonstrated that its EDR system is highly efficient as the average speed of resolving a complaint improved to 10.5 days. This is significant difference when compared to the likes of major regulators, including the NFA, FCA and ASIC.
Such swift processing of disputes, including the gathering of evidence, consultation by the DRC and ultimately decisions is not currency available anywhere in the world. Moreover, in most of the well-known government sanctioned regulatory regimes, such disputes would likely take a year if not more to resolve, and in some cases, would require the broker client to pay a processing fee to file a dispute.
Independent review
To provide unbiased and authentic decisions to disputes filed with the Commission, the organization has worked to incorporate independent professionals into the dispute resolution process. Since the Commission’s inception, the Dispute Resolution Committee (DRC) has been staffed with industry professionals who are experts in trading technology, management, compliance/legal and advisory services. The Committee members are not employed or otherwise involved in day to day operations of brokers, ensuring that their judgments are impartial. Today, the DRC is comprised of 20 industry professionals.
Criteria for membership
Supporting self-regulatory efforts is just one of the benefits provided by the Financial Commission as its members join voluntarily. Yet members must adhere to strict guidelines to maintain membership and demonstrate transparency, compliance, and integrity. The Commission regularly publishes updates on the status of its broker Members in order to ensure that all market participants are aware of any changes.
Commitment to trader education
Besides a commitment to always provide traders with free and unbiased dispute resolution services, the Commission also promotes trader education. On October 24th, 2018 the organization launched a new Facebook group, called “The Financial Commissioner” with the goal of promoting networking among traders and Facebook users, providing free educational materials, expert insights and industry alerts.
Novice and experienced traders can find many useful materials on the Financial Commission website, including “Tips for All”, aimed at providing information about common issues found in Forex trading and dealing with a broker, as well as insights into digital currencies, otherwise known as cryptocurrencies. The “Traders Education” section provides for a wide variety of free educational videos and trading guides for Forex and CFD markets.
Trader awareness
More and more traders are reaching out to the Commission to find out more information on particular brokers, ask for clarification on issues that they’ve experienced or to double-check the status of a broker that the client is thinking about trading with. The common questions and concerns received from the general trading community help the Commission understand the ongoing issues within the industry and also provide information and tools to allay customer concerns, improve the services of its member brokers and ultimately work to reduce the amount of complaints that arise across the industry.
In furthering the mission to help traders the Commission also maintains and regularly updates a Warning List on its website to inform the public of companies that are not recommend to trade with, following numerous reports and complaints filed by customers regarding these firms. In the Commission’s experience, traders often look to this list to check if other clients have experienced any possible wrongdoing with their broker.
If you would like to find out if your broker is a member of the Financial Commission, please see our Members page.
To review Financial Commission’s 2017 Annual Report, please click here.
