How we check
Where every fact on BrokerWarden comes from, how we score a firm, and what we do when we haven't checked something.
Licences come from registers
A licence is only shown as authorised when a regulator’s own public register says so. We record the licence number, the status the register shows, and the day we read it. Each firm page links to the register entry so you can check it yourself.
A licence we know about but haven’t read on the register yet is shown as Not verified. It stays on the page, because hiding it would hide a question you might want to ask the firm.
Every fact carries a date
Accounts, costs, funding methods, platforms, security and onboarding terms are each read from the firm’s own published pages, and each block shows the page it came from and the day we read it. Firms change their terms; the date tells you how fresh our reading is.
“Not checked” never means “no”
If we haven’t read something, the page says Not checked. We never turn a gap into “none”, “free” or zero. When a firm’s page does say “No” or “Free”, it’s because we read that on a dated source.
Costs are the firm’s own figures
Spreads and commissions on BrokerWarden are what the firm advertises, labelled As advertised. We haven’t measured them on a live account, and we don’t present them as if we had.
Two scores, never one
How safe your money is and how good the deal is are different questions, so each firm gets two scores on the same scale. Protection is about licences and oversight. Conditions is about what trading there is like. We don’t merge them into one number.
Protection
Conditions
When a firm has no reading for one of these measures, its weight is shared out over the measures we do have, and the score says which measures it rests on. When there isn’t enough checked data, the page says Not enough data instead of showing a number. That is not a zero.
Groups, entities and where you live
Many brands are groups of companies licensed in different countries. The company that signs you up depends on where you live, and so do the rules that protect you. Licence maps show each licence separately. Where we haven’t yet recorded which company onboards residents of a country, the page says so.
People check everything
Reviews and news are drafted with software and checked by a person before they’re published. Bylines are desk names; see the desk. If you think something is wrong, tell us.