How to Check a Broker's Regulation

A broker can print any regulator's logo on its website. The only way to know a licence is real is to look it up yourself, on the regulator's own register — never through a link the broker provides. It takes about five minutes, and it is the most useful five minutes of due diligence you will do before funding an account.

Step 1 — find the claimed licence

Look in the website footer or the "About" or "Legal" page for two things: the legal entity name (often different from the brand you know) and a licence or registration number. Note both exactly. If a broker will not tell you who regulates it and under what number, you already have your answer.

Step 2 — go to the regulator directly

Type the regulator's address into your browser yourself. Each major regulator runs a free public register:

FCA (UK) — the Financial Services Register.
ASIC (Australia) — ASIC Connect.
CySEC (Cyprus / EU) — its regulated-entities list.
NFA (US) — BASIC, the background register.

Search the licence number, then the firm name. Do not follow a "verify us" button on the broker's own site — a clone firm will send you to a copy of the register that it controls. If you are not certain of a regulator's official address, search its name plus "register" and confirm the domain belongs to the authority itself, not a lookalike.

Step 3 — match the details

A live licence number on its own is not enough. Check that:

The entity name matches the one on your account agreement, character for character.
The status is active — not lapsed, suspended or withdrawn.
The permissions actually cover dealing in forex or CFDs, not some unrelated activity.
The website and address on the register match the broker's.

Clone firms exist to exploit exactly this gap: a real number, a real regulated firm, but a lookalike site quietly pointing your deposit somewhere else.

"Registered" or "authorised representative" is not the same as "licensed". A firm may borrow another company's licence, or claim registration in a country that does not supervise forex at all. Read the wording, not the badge.

Step 4 — read the entity, not the brand

Say a broker trades as "Acme". The FCA register lists "Acme UK Ltd" as authorised — but the account you are opening is with "Acme Global Ltd", registered in Saint Vincent. Both are real; only one is regulated by the FCA, and it is not the one holding your money. The entity you sign with is the one whose protection you actually get. When the brand and the licensed entity do not line up, treat the licence as decoration.

A clean result

A broker worth funding gives you a licence number without being asked; that number returns the right entity on the regulator's own register; the status reads active; the permissions include forex or CFDs; and the entity on the register is the same one named in your account agreement. Anything short of all five is a reason to slow down.

The Karnek note

Karnek does not verify brokers for you, and it never asks for your broker password or withdrawal rights. It reads your MetaTrader terminal read-only to report performance — checking the broker's licence is a step you do once, directly with the regulator, before you deposit.

See it in Karnek: Karnek is read-only by design, it can never place, change or close a trade.