Story file
iFOREX, Reviewed
A London-listed parent, a British Virgin Islands onboarding entity, and a published cost page with no numbers on it. The disclosure is the story, and the August guidance cut is where the red pen lands.
Most brokers reaching this desk are private companies whose economics must be inferred. iFOREX is not. The group listed on the London Stock Exchange Main Market in February 2026, so its numbers are now filed. That makes it unusually auditable — and, since 19 August, uncomfortable.
The group in brief
The house reads the entity map before the pitch, and iFOREX publishes a legible one. Per the group’s own disclosure, Formula Investment House Ltd is described as an investment firm licensed and supervised by the British Virgin Islands’ Financial Services Commission. The European subsidiary trades as iFOREX Europe, the trading name of iCFD Ltd, which the firm states holds Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission licence number 143/11. A third company, Formula Investment House B.O.S. Ltd, provides treasury and back office services.
Those are the firm’s own statements, repeated as such. Note what the map lacks: no United Kingdom trading authorisation, no United Kingdom compensation scheme.
A listing is not a licence
Admission to the Main Market is a securities listing of the parent. The disclosure regime it imposes is genuinely useful to anyone assessing the firm. It is not a trading authorisation, and it confers nothing on an account holder. A reader who sees “London-listed” and infers “UK-regulated broker” has made a category error.
What a client gets is set by the entity signing the agreement, and that follows residence. Onboard through the Cyprus entity and EU product intervention rules apply: capped retail leverage, negative balance protection, a standardised risk warning, a defined complaints route. Onboard through the British Virgin Islands company — the default outside the EEA — and supervision is lighter, recourse thinner. Same brand, same platform, materially different purchase. The test this desk applied to IC Markets’ entity structure applies here.
The conversion that could not be run
The house signature is arithmetic: commission per side, doubled, divided by pip value per standard lot, added to the published average spread, giving all-in cost in pips. iFOREX defeats it at step one. The firm states that trading is typically structured around spreads rather than separate commissions, which in principle is the simpler product. But the published trading conditions explain what a spread is and print no spread table by instrument. There is no EUR/USD average to add anything to.
On a spread-only product the spread is the price, so a broker that does not publish it has left the cost of trading undisclosed before account opening — a price list with no prices, and the defect the rest of the disclosure must outweigh.
Credit where the page earns it: the financing side is documented properly, with formulas and examples, and the firm states the markup on currency pairs starts at 0.75% — a real published number, the charge that turns a held position into a slow subtraction. The EEA entity must also publish the figure nobody markets: iFOREX Europe’s disclosure states that 80% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with the provider — the most informative statistic on the site.
Red pen: the economics in the public record
Here the listing pays for itself as a research tool, and the reading is unflattering. As reported by trade press on 19 August 2026, the company cut FY2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to US$0.5-2.5 million after July trading income fell roughly 77% year on year to about US$720,000 — against first-half adjusted EBITDA near $2.4 million and a 2025 full-year figure near $4.3 million.
The composition is the interesting part. Per the same report, July new customer acquisition rose about 40% and deposits about 8% year on year, while first-half average revenue per user fell about 9%. More customers, more money in, sharply less trading income: a firm spending into a gap. No judgement on solvency is implied — only that acquisition and revenue point opposite ways, and that the listing is why outsiders can see it.
Bottom line
iFOREX is an unusual file: a group carrying the disclosure obligations of a public listing while leaving the one disclosure this desk needs — the price — off its pages. The corporate transparency is real and is credited here, but it does not substitute for the other kind: a listing tells you about the firm, a spread table about your trade.
Two checks cost nothing. Establish which entity would hold the account: the company named at the foot of the client agreement, not the brand on the marketing page. Then ask, in writing, for the average spread on the instruments you would trade. Every figure above is published by iFOREX or reported of it, and none was measured here.
The closing note this file will not go out without: leverage multiplies losses, published disclosure is not protection, and nothing in this review is financial advice.