FBS joins Russian CRFIN

Russian Forex broker FBS has recently announced that it has been granted membership of Russia’s most prestigious self-regulating organization (SRO) CRFIN. The organisation aims to bring the provision of FX services into the Russian regulatory framework, which means CRFIN acts as a industry lobby in addition to its role outlining rules to its member brokers. Membership in the CRFIN self-regulating organisation is held by the vast majority of the country’s leading FX brokerages, who have been pushing for more regulatory recognition.

FBS has been around for over ten years now and is among the Russian brokerage firms who have been particularly active in bring FX services to Africa and South-East Asia. Without any serious domestic competition these brokerages were seen as providing a superior level of service, despite offering spreads which would be considered wide by some industry standards. FBS concentrated on expansion into South-East Asian markets in particular Indonesia, where they became known as an early entrant having created a number of localized products specifically for the Indonesian market.

Recently FBS and other firms have been having a much harder time in Indonesia and south-east Asia in general with local regulators clamping down on the operation of FX brokerages. This has led to some local regulators to clamp down or totally ban Forex trading. For instance, Malaysia’s Central Bank (MAS) issued a ban on foreign FX brokers, while India’s Reserve Bank has directed banks to prohibit credit transactions with Forex companies. Indonesia has taken things a step further by restricting access to a number of FXbrokerages and portals, which has created a strong negative bias against European firms despite the IP ban being possible to circumvent by using VPN’s and proxies. FBS decision to join CRFIN, will add a degree of credibility to the brand when operating in these South-East Asian territories. 

CRFIN pushes for Russian Regulation

The CRFIN has been the most vocal lobby group for creating a regulatory framework for the regulation of FX services in Russia. Despite the fact that Russia is a significant market in terms of volume up to this present time there has been no government regulation overseeing the provision of FX services. CRFIN has had some limited success in pushing the case for the government regulation of Foreign exchange services with the Minister of Finance recognizing the important role played by self-regulatory organizations and in addition to this the state Duma read a bill proposing a regulatory framework to govern the provision of FX services. Despite these minor successes Forex regulation in Russia looks some way off.