Pepperstone Trust And Safety

This page covers how safe an account with Pepperstone Markets Limited is and how the Securities Commission of The Bahamas regulates it. I consider licensing the first thing any trader should check, so the details below are worth reading before a deposit.

This page is a desk-based comparison built from each broker's published pricing and terms and our recorded data; we have not tested these accounts except in our recorded tests.

Is Pepperstone a safe broker?

An account opened from most countries sits with Pepperstone Markets Limited, company 177174 B in The Bahamas, holding licence SIA-F217 from the Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB). I rate regulation highly because a licence gives you a firm to check on the regulator’s own register, and the SCB is the body that answers for this entity. That register is also where a reader can confirm the licence is current before depositing anything.

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Is Pepperstone regulated?

• 91Trust Score
• 95regulation
• 90reputation
• 88reviews

Yes, Pepperstone has a number of subsidiaries across the globe, each being regulated by the appropriate financial body for the country or region in which the subsidiary is based. Traders whose home country is not served by a dedicated Pepperstone entity are placed with Pepperstone Markets Limited, which the Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB) licenses and supervises. A regulator only governs the entity it licensed, so its protections extend to that entity’s clients alone.

Retail Client money is kept apart from Pepperstone Markets Limited’s own funds in a segregated trust account, and none of it backs the firm’s hedging with liquidity providers or another client’s obligations. Published terms for this entity set retail leverage at up to 200:1 on major and minor forex pairs as a maximum, charge share CFD commissions from 0.2% a side on Hong Kong shares, and apply US$20 to international bank wire withdrawals. I would read the full fee schedule at Pepperstone Fees before you deposit, because costs vary by entity.

Who regulates Pepperstone?

The table below lists every Pepperstone company with its regulator, with Pepperstone Markets Limited first. The Securities Commission of The Bahamas lists that firm on its register of firms under the Securities Industry Act as at March 31, 2026, registered to deal in capital market instruments as agent or principal.

Some of the abbreviations on this page are expanded to the regulator's full name: a broker regulated by DFSA is regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority. AFSL is an Australian Financial Services Licence.

Which company a client is opened with depends on where they live. Africa is served by Pepperstone Markets Kenya Limited under Kenya’s CMA, while Australia, the UK, the EU, Germany and Austria each have their own Pepperstone company. In the UAE, Pepperstone Financial Services (DIFC) Limited is regulated by the DFSA and takes professional clients only; other applicants are introduced by Pepperstone Financial Services LLC and opened with Pepperstone Markets Limited. Clients from a country without its own Pepperstone company are opened with Pepperstone Markets Limited too. I would check which company holds the account, since its regulator answers a complaint.

The Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB) is the regulator that governs your account with Pepperstone Markets Limited. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) each supervise their own licensed entities in their own countries, and protections such as the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, the Financial Ombudsman Service, the Investor Compensation Fund and the Australian Financial Complaints Authority belong to those entities’ clients, not to you. A complaint about Pepperstone Markets Limited goes first to Pepperstone’s Client Experience team, then to its Compliance Team, which responds in writing within 14 to 21 days, and finally to the Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB).

All regions offer similar trading accounts including the standard (no commission) account and the razor account with trading conditions similar to an Pepperstone ECN trading account.

Are Pepperstone brokerage deposits safe?

Your money is kept separate from Pepperstone Markets Limited’s own funds, and it sits with regulated banks that are screened against risk criteria, spread across several major banks rather than merged into a single pool. That separation is what I would look for first in a broker, and it is the structure this entity publishes. The risk that remains is a bank’s own failure, which spreading across several banks reduces.

Learn more about the broker on our main Pepperstone Review updated monthly.

Is Pepperstone likely to go into liquidation?

The SCB requires a firm dealing as agent and principal to hold US$300,000 in capital, and US$120,000 for a firm dealing as agent only, and Pepperstone Markets Limited must meet the threshold matching its registered activity. I treat a capital requirement as a buffer against the firm’s own risks, not a promise that client money or the business is safe from every failure.

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What compensation scheme applies to your account?

The SCB runs no compensation scheme, and the terms and complaints notice for Pepperstone Markets Limited name none, so your account with this entity carries no scheme backing. I would not treat that as unusual, but it is worth knowing: the FSCS, the Cyprus ICF, and the German schemes belong to the clients of the UK, EU, and German companies, not to this one.

Is negative balance protection offered?

Yes, a Retail Client of Pepperstone Markets Limited cannot lose more than the balance in the account, because a negative equity balance is not your liability. This means that if your trading account balance goes below zero, the broker will absorb that loss and return your account back to zero.

On MetaTrader 4 and 5 the margin call warning arrives at a 90% margin level, and on cTrader between 80% and 500%, which I would treat as an early prompt to top up or trim positions. If your equity falls further, an automatic stop out below a 50% margin level closes losing positions for retail clients, and below 20% for professional clients. The same levels apply to both the Standard and Razor accounts.

A Pepperstone Pro account with Pepperstone Markets Limited gets negative balance protection only at Pepperstone’s discretion, capped at US$100,000 of total account balance, applied once, and it can be withheld if misconduct or market abuse caused the shortfall. The trade-off is access to higher Pepperstone leverage. Keep in mind there is a 50% margin close-out that applies to all traders.

• Margin level = < 90% (MetaTrader 4/5) or 80% to 500% (cTrader) will result in a margin call warning
• Margin level = < 50% (automatic stop out) for retail clients Margin level = < 20% (automatic stop out) for professional clients

Margin calls and stop outs lower the chance of a negative balance, but I would not rely on them in place of risk control. Stop loss and take profit orders sit on every platform, and using them deliberately is what keeps the account in hand.

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