The LSE Directory / CFD and forex brokers
Swissquote is a Swiss online bank and trading group headquartered in Gland, in the canton of Vaud, offering retail and institutional clients trading and investing across forex, CFDs, equities, ETFs, bonds, funds, options, futures and cryptocurrencies, alongside standard banking services such as multi-currency accounts, mortgages and a robo-advisory investing product. It holds a full Swiss banking license from FINMA and operates regulated entities in the UK (Swissquote Ltd, FCA reference 562170), Luxembourg (Swissquote Bank Europe SA), Malta, Cyprus, the UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Africa. What separates it from pure-play CFD and forex brokers is that it is a licensed bank first, so client cash and securities sit inside a regulated banking entity rather than a broker-only wrapper. It also runs its own crypto venue, SQX, an in-house exchange offering around 50 trading pairs including stablecoins, custody for roughly 45 cryptocurrencies, and staking, built mainly for institutional clients and market makers who connect via FIX or REST APIs. Retail users trade through the Swissquote web platform, a Pro terminal, mobile apps or MetaTrader 4/5, while a separate institutional business sells custody, depositary services, forex and precious-metals liquidity, structured products and API access to banks, brokers, asset managers, funds and corporate treasuries. Its consumer lineup also includes Yuh, a passive-investing app for stocks and crypto that Swissquote co-founded with PostFinance in 2021 and took full ownership of in July 2025, in a deal that valued Yuh at CHF 180 million. The group traces back to Marvel Communication SA, a financial software firm Marc Burki and Paolo Buzzi founded in 1990; it relaunched as Swissquote in 1996 as one of the first sites offering free real-time Swiss stock prices, floated on the SIX Swiss Exchange under ticker SQN in May 2000 while raising roughly CHF 70 million, and obtained its banking license in 2001. It expanded through acquisition, including forex specialists ACM Advanced Currency Markets and Tradejet in 2010 and MIG Bank in 2013, plus Luxembourg's Internaxx Bank in 2018. As of December 31, 2025, the group held CHF 88.7 billion in client assets across roughly 750,000 accounts, employed about 1,448 people, and reported 2025 operating income near CHF 724 million and net profit of CHF 366.4 million. For 2026 the group has guided to about CHF 760 million in revenue, broadly in line with analyst consensus, but to pre-tax profit of CHF 385 million, roughly 3 percent below consensus; management attributed the gap to higher planned spending on technology, data and engineering headcount rather than any weakening in its underlying trading and banking business.
