Cyprus: 1,5 million traders, over 200 brokers and revenues 1,68 billion

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) in a recently published bulletin shared with us a handful of interesting statistics on the local financial market. In Cyprus, there are over 200 brokers Forex / CFD, whose services are used by over 1,5 million traders from almost all over the world. This is an impressive number for a country inhabited by slightly over 1,2 million people (132 people on 1 sq km).

Cypriot Forex market in numbers

As a result of the introduction by CySEC of the so-called RBS-F (Risk Based Supervision Framework - risk based on supervisory framework) in the 2015 year, statistics on supervised entities, their activities, customers served and their assets were collected. The result is a report that is to assess the risks and possibly provide potential solutions to the problems that arise. Its most important and the most interesting data (in our opinion 🙂) is presented below.

Cypriot licenses

CySEC oversees the financial market, but of course this is not just Forex. There are 3 license types:

• CIF (Cyprus Investment Firms) - Cypriot investment companies that include Forex / CFD / binary options brokers;
• ASP (Administrative Service Providers) - companies providing administrative services;
• MgtCos (Management Companies) - management companies.

CIF is the largest and accounts for 52,6% of all active permits issued by CySEC. At the end of the year 2017 was up to 219.

The CIFs themselves are divided into two categories:

1. CFDs - offering trading on contracts for differences;
2. TR (Traditional Companies) - offering trade in the so-called traditional financial instruments.

The first group includes 60% of the total (132 out of 219), which shows a slight advantage of brokers offering trading on CFD instruments compared to classic ones, where "only" 87 CySEC-licensed entities decided to obtain a TR license.

All Cypriot entities with a CIF license gave employment to 2017 4 in 430.

Almost 1,5 million customers

Cypriot investment companies were 219 but they served 98% of all clients (2% belongs to ASP and MgtCos together). Interestingly, the results have deteriorated over the years of 2015-2017. In 2015, around 1 700 000 customers used CIF services, while in 2016, over 260 000 enjoyed less. Last year, this number stabilized and amounted to 1 472 753 customers. In connection with the regulations introduced by ESMA, it can be assumed that the result for 2018 will be further deteriorated.

In fact, the number of so-called unique traders can be much lower. The CySEC report does not specify whether it distinguishes that a given customer has, for example, several accounts with different brokers, which is an extremely common practice. It must be assumed, therefore, that a single customer can be counted several times.

Traders prefer CFD

Exceptionally interesting is the fact that as many as 96% of all customers in 2017 year were served by brokers with a CFD license. This means that 132 entities have dealt with 1,4 million customers. On average, it gives over 10 600 customers per one company, compared to only 667 customers per one entity with a CIT TR license.

The market worth 1,7 billion

The report also includes data on the economic situation in the industry. In 2017, CIF's trading income was EUR 1,68 billion, and net income was EUR 222,7 million. Assets are estimated at EUR 9,94 billion. Assets held by CFD Brokers totaled EUR 31 billion as of December 2017, 7,7.

The Cypriot regulator has announced regular publication of reports, which means that by the end of the year, 2019 will see statistics for the year 2018. We are looking forward to! 🙂