Advanced Markets Review

FXCanary’s investigation into Advanced Markets began with a cross‑check of the broker’s regulatory claims against the official registers of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). We examined the company’s registration details at Companies House, scrutinised its employee count and dug into aggregated industry databases that track broker licences and complaint volumes.

We then turned to the real‑user record. From the reviews we gathered — sparse but starkly contrasting — we extracted concrete situations described by traders who claim to have used the platform. These accounts, together with the broker’s publicly available disclosures, form the backbone of this assessment. Every finding has been cross‑referenced where possible; where information is absent, we do not fill the gap with conjecture.

Advanced Markets (UK) Ltd was incorporated on 7 December 2018 at 40 Gracechurch Street, London — a prestigious City address often used by financial‑services firms. Yet the official Companies House record shows zero employees. A brokerage with no staff raises immediate structural questions: who handles compliance, operations, customer support and risk management?

While it is not impossible for a regulated STP broker to outsource significant parts of its function or rely on automated systems, the absence of any employees is a red flag. It suggests either an extraordinarily lean operation or a legal vehicle that may not be actively conducting full‑scale brokerage activities. For a retail or even professional trader, this level of opacity is deeply troubling, because it leaves little recourse or accountability if something goes wrong.

Advanced Markets holds FCA reference number 777739 with a status of ‘Inst Forex Execution (STP)’. This means the broker is permitted to deal in investments as principal in relation to foreign exchange. The FCA’s regime imposes capital requirements, client‑asset safeguarding rules (though no explicit client‑money permission was visible in the limited extract we reviewed) and conduct standards.

Nevertheless, an FCA licence is not a blanket guarantee of safety. The regulator’s oversight varies with a firm’s size and risk profile, and small, lightly staffed entities can slip through the cracks. The licence itself is not a full‑scope investment‑firm permission; it is tailored to STP forex execution. Traders should understand that this authorisation does not carry the same protective weight as, say, an FCA licence that explicitly covers holding client money or operating as a principal for a range of investment products.

One of the most troubling observations in our review is the broker’s self‑description, which states that it is ‘licensed by ASIC’. Our search of the ASIC Professional Register returned no matching entity. Claiming a licence one does not hold is a textbook red flag and is frequently seen in clone‑firm or outright fraudulent schemes.

Even though no clone or impersonator sites were detected in the data we examined, this discrepancy erodes trust. It suggests that the company is either misrepresenting its credentials or that an older or offshore entity with a different name may have been referenced loosely. Either way, a legitimate broker should be able to produce a verifiable licence number, and Advanced Markets has not done so for ASIC at the time of our review.

Publicly available information points to a high minimum deposit requirement. This is consistent with a firm that targets professional and institutional clients, but the lack of a clear account‑tier structure is unusual. Most brokers, even those serving professionals, detail at least one account type with its minimums, commissions and spreads.

The absence of published account specifics forces a prospective client to engage with the broker’s sales team before understanding the cost of trading. For a broker already surrounded by transparency questions, this is another point of friction. Traders who value upfront, apples‑to‑apples comparisons will find the opacity off‑putting.

Reports describe limited deposit options, and the broker does not publicly explain which methods are available. Coupled with the high minimum deposit, this makes the onboarding process feel guarded rather than welcoming.

The withdrawal picture is even more concerning. Among the real‑user reviews we analysed, one trader claimed to have withdrawn over $5,340 without issue — a positive outcome. But a far more alarming account comes from a one‑star reviewer who alleges that the broker froze their funds and demanded a $700 ‘insurance’ fee before allowing a withdrawal. This is the classic anatomy of an advance‑fee scam: victims are lured into depositing, then told they must pay extra fees — often for taxes, insurance, or verification — before they can access their own money. Even if such reports represent a minority of cases, their nature demands that any trader proceed with extreme caution.

Advanced Markets positions itself primarily as a Forex broker. The STP permission implies that it operates a non‑dealing‑desk model, passing client orders directly to liquidity providers. However, the exact platform — whether MetaTrader, cTrader or a proprietary solution — is not disclosed in any of the materials we could review.

For an institutional‑grade service, one would expect detailed documentation on execution quality, latency, available currency pairs and any ancillary instruments (such as CFDs on indices or commodities). The absence of such specifics makes it difficult to evaluate how Advanced Markets compares with established STP competitors. Any trader who proceeds should request a full product and platform disclosure in writing before depositing a cent.

On the fee side, one positive reviewer highlighted that there were ‘no hidden fees attached’. While this sounds reassuring, it is not a substitute for a published fee schedule. A broker that does not clearly state its spreads, commissions, overnight swaps and any account maintenance charges leaves room for ambiguity.

Given the STP model, traders can expect raw spreads plus a commission, but until official figures are provided, no realistic cost comparison is possible. The limited positive feedback on fees does little to alleviate the broader concern that costs might only become apparent after money is committed.

The user‑review record we examined is tiny — only a handful of data points — but it tells a polarised story. On one side, two glowing reviews speak of legitimate earnings, no hidden fees and successful withdrawals. Those reviews are, however, vague and could easily be planted by the broker or affiliates. On the other side, two scathing one‑star reviews paint a picture of a sophisticated scam: deposits are taken, then the broker demands extra payments under various pretexts, and withdrawals are frozen unless additional fees are paid.

For FXCanary, the scam‑like pattern described in the negative reviews carries significant weight. It aligns with known advance‑fee fraud tactics and is far more specific than the rosy, generic praise found in the positive reviews. While we cannot conclusively call the broker a scam based solely on these reviews, they are consistent enough with the other red flags — zero employees, unverified ASIC licence, opaque account terms — to justify our heightened caution.

Trustpilot awards the broker a modest 3.1 out of 5, but this is based on only four reviews — statistically meaningless. The Forex Peace Army score of 2.988/5 is similarly low and reflects a generally dissatisfied user base. Aggregated industry data also records two withdrawal‑related complaints, which, given the likely small client pool, is a non‑trivial number.

These external indicators align with our internal findings. There is no wide chasm between the aggregated scores and the real‑review narrative we assembled; both point to a firm that leaves many of its users uneasy or outright aggrieved. The FXCanary Scam Risk Score of 36 out of 100 — placed firmly in the ‘Guarded’ band — synthesises these signals into a single numeric caution.

Advanced Markets presents a facade of institutional respectability: an FCA licence, a London address and an STP execution model. Yet the gaps are too many and too serious to ignore. The company has no employees, its claimed ASIC licence cannot be verified, the account and fee structures are hidden from public view, and the user‑review record carries alarming accusations of advance‑fee demands.

For a professional trader who can afford to lose their deposit and who possesses the resources to independently verify every claim — including a direct check with the FCA and, if necessary, a site visit to the registered office — the broker might warrant a small, experimental allocation. For everyone else, FXCanary recommends staying away. The potential cost of being wrong is too high, and there are too many demonstrably transparent, well‑resourced alternatives with clean user records.

In our view, a Scam Risk Score of 36/100 means that Advanced Markets must be treated as an extremely high‑risk counterparty. Traders should protect themselves by refusing to deposit any money they cannot afford to lose entirely, by never paying ‘release fees’ or ‘insurance premiums’ demanded after deposit, and by demanding — and verifying — complete disclosure of regulatory credentials before committing capital. In a market full of licensed, employee‑backed brokers with transparent pricing, there is little reason to gamble on one that leaves so many questions unanswered.