Dear Client,
On 1st August 2018, the Financial Conduct Authority, guided by ESMA’s product intervention measures, will introduce a raft of changes to the CFD industry. As a result, you will see some significant changes to the amount of leverage you can trade with via our platforms as well as some other minor changes.
These changes are being implemented by European regulators and affect ALL FX, CFD & Spread betting brokers.
Please note, the below changes does not impact Elected Professional clients. For more information on Elected Professionals, please click here.
Key changes to your account from 1st August 2018:
1. New Leverage levels
A key change is to reduce the maximum leverage you have access to for each instrument.
CFD instruments Existing Leverage Leverage from 1st August
Major FX Pairs
Eg EURUSD, GBPUSD 200:1 30:1
Minor FX Pairs
Eg EURCAD, AUDJPY 100:1 20:1
Major Indices & Gold
Eg DE30, US30 100:1 20:1
Commodities
Eg Silver, Oil 50:1 10:1
Equity CFDs
Eg Facebook, Barclays 10:1 5:1
Cryptocurrencies
Eg Bitcoin, Ethereum 5:1 2:1
2. 50% Margin Close Out
The margin close out we will apply to your account will be increased from 30% to 50%. This takes effect from 1st August and will be inclusive of all open trades at that time.
3. Cashback and other incentives
All monetary and non-monetary based incentives such as Cashback are banned by the Financial Conduct Authority. Therefore, we will be terminating all cashback agreements and other incentive based agreements by 31st July 2018.
In preparation for the above changes, we’re making some amendments to our Terms of Business [LINK], Key Information Documents and Best Execution Policy [LINK], which will all go live from 1st August 2018. In addition to this, we are updating our specification and margin tables on our website which will go live from 28th July 2018.
4. Important! MT4 partial close change from 28th July
From 28th July 2018, if you partially close transactions on the MT4 platform, the remaining part of the transaction will be settled at the new margin levels (post ESMA). Please ensure you have sufficient margin in your account in advance of this date.
How can you get prepared for these changes?
The biggest impact you will find is that with lower leverage levels, you will need to put up more funds as margin to trade the same size you are used to. For example, normally a 1 lot trade on EURUSD would require around £436 in margin. After 1st August, this would now require £2,900.
If you want to trade similar sizes as you are used to, you need to deposit more funds to top up your margin.
[Deposit Funds]
If you have any questions about these changes or you need any assistance, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our customer support team at: ukservice@xtb.co.uk or +44 (0)20 3695 3086
Kind regards,
XTB Team