Is CPT Markets legit? A real FCA licence and its clones

CPT Markets has a real FCA licence, but it is not the licence that covers your account. International clients are usually taken on through an offshore entity in Belize or South Africa, where there is no Ombudsman and no FSCS.

Add the many copycat websites that borrow this exact name, and CPT Markets is a broker you need to check on three levels before you deposit.

Question 1: Who does CPT Markets' real FCA licence belong to?

CPT Markets is a forex and CFD brokerage brand that operates through several legal entities. The entity that carries its reputation is CPT Markets UK Limited, authorised and supervised by the FCA (UK), firm reference number (FRN) 606110, at Level 7 One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London.

This is a Tier-1 licence in the full sense, meaning it comes from the group of strictest regulators such as the FCA and ASIC. The FCA requires client money to be segregated and audited.

Eligible clients also get the right to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service, plus FSCS protection of up to 85,000 pounds if the firm goes bust.

Alongside the UK entity, CPT Markets also runs offshore entities, registered in island jurisdictions where supervision is much lighter. The usual ones are an FSC Belize licence and an FSCA South Africa licence.

What you can verify, and what deserves more trust than the score on any review site, this one included: the UK entity can be looked up directly in the FCA Register, the regulator's public register. It has a name, a number and a status. An unknown broker cannot offer that.

But “the group has a Tier-1 entity” and “your account is protected by Tier-1 rules” are two different things, and the gap between them is where Vietnamese traders often fall. On to the second question.

Question 2: Which entity are you signing a contract with?

The FCA caps leverage for retail clients at 30:1 (leverage lets you control a position larger than the money you actually put in), bans many kinds of promotions, and makes risk warnings mandatory.

Precisely because the rules are that strict, many CFD brokers serving Asia, CPT Markets included, usually take on international clients through an offshore entity in Belize or South Africa, where much higher leverage is on offer and the constraints are fewer.

When a Vietnamese trader opens an account and sees leverage of 1:500 or higher, that is the reason. That figure does not exist under the FCA.

When a dispute arises, the difference becomes very concrete. The two strongest protections of a UK licence, the Ombudsman and the FSCS, apply only to clients of CPT Markets UK Limited. Clients under the Belize or FSCA entity have no equivalent mechanism.

High leverage, advertised as an advantage, is the thing that burns through an account fastest. And if you ever have to sue, you face an entity registered in a jurisdiction where a Vietnamese client has almost no realistic way to pursue a claim.

The check takes exactly one minute: when you register, read the line naming the “issuing entity” in the client agreement, and read the website footer. If “CPT Markets UK Limited, FRN 606110” is not there, none of the FCA wording on the homepage is a protection that applies to you.

Question 3: Is the site you have open the real CPT?

This is what sets CPT Markets apart from the other brokers in this section, and it is the main reason it sits in the “proceed with caution” group. Type “CPT Markets” into Google and you meet a string of domains: cptmarkets.com, cptmarkets.co.uk, cpttrades.com, cptmarketsig.com, cpttltd.com… With many brokers, that sight alone signals a fake site.

With CPT, the truth is messier: there is a real broker licensed by the FCA, and running alongside it a whole thicket of impersonating websites that the FCA itself has had to warn about.

A “clone firm”, in the FCA's term, is a fraudster that takes the exact name, licence number and address of an authorised firm to build trust, then sets up its own website to trick people into depositing. The public warnings involving the CPT name include the following (all of them are fake entities, NOT the real broker):

The FCA repeats the same message in every warning: if you deal with a clone firm, you have no right to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service and no FSCS protection. Once the money is gone, there is almost no way to claim it back.

A name copied into four or five variants is no small matter. It turns a simple “find the CPT broker” search into a walk through a minefield: click the wrong ad link and you are depositing with a fraudster.

The clone pattern always follows the same sequence: borrow the real name and licence number, build a near-identical website, run ads, then block withdrawals once the money is in.

And here is the paradox: with brokers that get cloned, knowing the broker holds a real licence barely helps, because the clone displays that same licence number. The only thing that tells them apart is the domain.

Open the FCA Register, type 606110, and compare the domain listed in the register with the characters in your address bar. One character off means stop. The FCA also has a separate warning page for cpttrades.com, describing it as a clone of an FCA authorised firm.

Four tests to rule out a clone in 60 seconds

You do not need to be an expert. You only need to do four things:

Search backwards from the licence number rather than from the name: go to register.fca.org.uk, type 606110, and the result must return “CPT Markets UK Limited” with a matching website and address. A fraudster can copy the name, but working back from the FRN, every detail has to match. One wrong detail means it is fake.

Check the official domain: the UK entity uses cptmarkets.co.uk. Every odd variant (cpttrades, cptmarketsig, cpttltd, pamcptmarket, cpt-…vn.xyz) is outside it, and most of them have already been named by the FCA.

Look at where the money goes: a real broker takes funds into a company account through a payment gateway. If you are asked to transfer to a personal account, stop at once, no exceptions.

Listen closely to the pitch: CPT Markets is a broker. It does not promise profits and does not pay “downline commission”. Friendly strangers with screenshots of profitable statements and promises of fixed returns are the trademark of the impersonation layer.

If you still decide to try it

Suppose you have verified the right entity and accept the risk. The sequence I recommend for any broker in the medium-risk group: only reach the site through a domain you have looked up yourself, and never click links in messages or ads.

Deposit the smallest amount you are prepared to lose, and complete KYC before you trade instead of leaving the paperwork until you withdraw.

Place a few small trades, then withdraw part of the balance within the first week, and take screenshots of when you placed the request and when the money arrived. Only add capital once the deposit, trade and withdraw cycle runs smoothly. If it snags at any step, you lose only the test amount.

And please remember this: high leverage under an offshore entity is risk repackaged as a “perk”. Keeping your real leverage low is the cheapest way to protect yourself.

My verdict on CPT Markets

The CPT Markets UK Limited entity is a broker with a real FCA licence. If you genuinely trade under that entity with low leverage, it is an option with Tier-1 supervision.

But the reality for many Vietnamese traders adds up to three stacked minuses. You are usually taken on by an offshore entity, so you lose the UK layer of protection. High leverage multiplies the risk. And the name is cloned so heavily that the FCA has had to issue warnings several times.

That is enough for me to put CPT Markets in the “proceed with caution” group, because the gap between “FCA in the ads” and “what you actually get” is too easy to exploit.

If your top criterion is “someone who answers for it when things go wrong”, let the legal side drive your choice rather than leverage or promotions.

An opaque broker always has an alternative: brokers with licences you can verify, published fees and clear deposits and withdrawals.

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