When it comes to investing, you’re likely going to come into contact with a number of scams and, when you are investing, it is essential to protect your money from falling into the wrong hands. No matter if you are just starting out or are an experienced trading professional, it can be difficult to differentiate between a legitimate trader and a scam. With innovative methods, scammers have become a lot more clever when it comes to enticing investors into misleading trades that result in them losing their funds. In this blog, we will give an honest review of where BDSwiss plays a part in this topic.
Who Are BDSwiss?
BDSwiss has been established since 2021 and has provided CFD and forex services to more than 1 million investors. The firm has experienced dramatic growth trajectories as well as won multiple awards for its services and products.
Throughout the years, BDSwiss have had a range of partnerships with brands and sports teams. Since 2021, they have been sponsors of the DP World Tour Championship, AVIV Dubai Championship and the MercedesCup ATP 250.
They also sponsor local football teams and even some cycling teams. This all encourages investors into thinking they are legitimate investors but are they? Is this just a smokescreen for what is happening behind closed doors?
Is BDSwisss Legitimate?
Scammers use a range of different methods to part you with your money, but online trading platforms are one of the most lucrative and recurrent methods that scammers will use. It’s pretty easy for a brokerage firm to tick all the required boxes, but if you know what to look out for, there are some red flags that they hide from investors. To evaluate whether BDSwiss is legitimate, it’s important to get an overview of the services and products they provide, its regulatory status and how they use its data.
BDSwiss Background
The company claim to specialise in multiple formats including shares, forex pairs, metals, energy, ETFs and indices. Since June 2020, the company has had over 1.5 million registered investors with a trading volume of $84 billion. BDSwiss had its first office in Berlin in 2012, but now it also has offices in Seychelles and Mauritius which are listed as its current address. It is now present in over 10 countries and draws clients from over 186 different countries.
Who Regulates BDSwiss?
BDSwiss operates under BDSwiss Group which has licenses from various regions including:
- BDSwiss Holdings Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission under CySEC license number 199/13.
- BDS Markets is regulated as an investment Dealer by the Mauritius Financial Services Authority (FSC).
- BDSwiss GmbH is registered by BaFIN in Germany.
- BDS Ltd is regulated and authorized by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in Seychelles, license number SD047.
As you can already see, BDSwiss is not regulated by any reputable regulatory body like the FCA. This raises many questions and red flags as many of the regulatory bodies they are registered with have very loose rules which are extremely risky for their customers.
BDSwiss Red Flags
Although BDSwiss is regulated by some bodies such as CySEC, the firm has been in trouble in the past which, of course, sends red flags to people like us. We investigated and it seems that in 2017, CySEC fined BDSwiss for €150,000 for violating market laws. CySEC also gave them an administrative fine of €5,000 for not complying with the laws in 2016.
Let us ask you this, would you be comfortable investing your money with a company that has been fined twice for not abiding by the law? For a company to have been fined twice by regulatory bodies shows they are not operating in a legit manner and are not following the rules and regulations in place.
Negative Customer Reviews
There have been many reviews from previous customers of BDSwiss, but overall the reviews outline two main areas that stick out a lot. These are:
- Customers make withdrawals but don’t receive their funds.
- High spreads and manipulation of the price – make it hard to profit from trades.
With these two elements being the main focus on bad reviews, it’s easy to say that you should stay clear of this company at all costs.
Multiple Addresses
BDSwiss has multiple entities that operate in many regions. Due to them having this, they claim to be regulated by multiple bodies in Seychelles, Mauritius, Germany and Cyprus. According to the CySEC website, the address is for Limassol in Cyprus, but the BDSwiss website has a Mauritius address. Multiple addresses are very confusing.
The worst part of this is none of the regulatory bodies is strict as well as their offices are in offshore zones which makes it much easier to find loopholes to scam investors. A legitimate company will have one traceable address.
Final Verdict
If you are new to investing forex or any other form of investing, it is best to stay away from BDSwiss. With customer reviews outlining that they don’t receive the funds when withdrawing, as well as making it extremely hard to profit from your trades, it is easy to see that there are some illegitimate processes in play. Combined with the fact that they are not registered with the FCA, it would be much safer to go with a broker that is.
If you have lost your funds from a forex scam or other from an irregulated broker, then speak to us as we will be able to help recover your losses. BDSwiss is one of, if not the most, common brokers that we deal with and we settle many cases against them, without any court intervention. We also offer a no win, no fee process. Contact us today and we can discuss your recovery process.
