For the second day in a row, we have news of a fairly well known name in the Retail FX and CFDs sector rebranding.
After our report yesterday breaking the news that Abu Dhabi (and London and Hong Kong) based ADS Securities was rebranding to ADSS, now we have learned that CySEC licensed iFOREX.com – one of the longest-tenured brands in the business – is changing its name, brand and effective URL to Vestle, at website vestle.com.
However it looks like the rebrand is just for Europe.
CySEC licensed iCFD Ltd, which operates the broker brands, said in a message to clients that the changeover to Vestle from iFOREX will happen in several stages, beginning next week (although the vestle.com site is already live). First up will be the Netherlands, Germany, Greece and English-speaking markets on July 1. As of July 15 Vestle will replace the iFOREX brand in Spain, Poland, Italy and France. The company will take down its iforex.eu website, which serves European-based clients, after the changeover is complete.
As noted above it looks like the rebrand will occur only in Europe, with Vestle serving clients in the EU with the exclusion of Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The iFOREX group also owns a separately licensed Hungarian entity eBrókerház Befektetési Szolgáltató Zrt., an investment firm authorized and supervised by the National Bank of Hungary.
Outside the EU, it looks like iFOREX will continue to operate the iforex.com website, run by the group’s offshore BVI entity Formula Investment House Ltd., which is licensed and supervised by the British Virgin Islands’ Financial Services Commission (FSC).
It seems as though the changes are meant to distant and make distinct the company’s EU and non-EU operations. Rules governing EU/EEA brokers are set to change next week, following new directives mandated by pan-European financial regulator ESMA. These will include a ban on Binary Options, a ban on deposit bonus payments to retail clients, and severe FX and CFD leverage limits ranging from 30x on FX major pairs down to just 2x on cryptocurrencies. European regulators are also becoming increasingly concerned about brokers which operate separate companies, but under the same brand, in regulated and offshore entities.