“Beware of AXI Clones” Warns the FCA

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom has warned about “AXI Corp Limited,” an organisation that is a fake clone of the legitimate forex and CFD broker Axi and its sister business, One Financial Markets. An official warning posted on the financial watchdog's website on Thursday identified the clone.

Australian broker AxiCorp in August 2018 acquired one Financial Markets, and the retail broker is now known as Axi Financial Services (UK) Limited. AxiCorp Limited, on the other hand, is in charge of Axi.

The FCA claims that while the authorised firms are based at 1 Finsbury Market in London, the clone firm is located on Leadenhall Street. The watchdog only supplied the clone firm's address, phone number, and email addresses but does not reveal the website address.

Nearly all businesses and people engaged in financial services operations in the UK must be authorised or registered by the FCA. The FCA stated in an official statement that this clone firm of Axi has been preying on UK residents while pretending to be authorised. Nevertheless, it was never authorised nor registered with the FCA.

In conjunction with the FCAs discovery, WikiFX also spotted more clones of AXI in the market. This is a common tactic used by forex fraudsters in the attempt to deceive trading clients.

The FCA reported a number of copycat websites and businesses that were posing as registered brokers under its control in 2022. In July, the financial markets regulator alerted authorities to a website clone miming Zenfinix, a London-based FX and CFD broker. The regulator observed that the clone company intended to defraud UK investors.

A clone of the authorised company Rational Foreign Exchange Limited, Crypto-Trade was discovered to be three months prior by the financial markets watchdog. It was mentioned that when the law firm functioned as rationalfx.com, an unlicensed organisation managed the website www.crypto-trade365.com.

The FCA detected three additional clone companies between January and March 2022. The regulator alleges that AZOpitons, which states that the company provides cryptocurrency-related services to both institutional and individual investors, is a replica of Octopus Investments Limited. Additionally, the supervisor in March 2022 and January 2022, respectively, highlighted XTB and IC Markets clones.

Therefore, the most convenient way to identify if a broker is legitimate or clone is to download the free WikiFX mobile application. Our platform is specially curated to answer all broker-related questions and highlight any of the red flags to our users.