How to check an investment firm, broker or platform before you send money

Why check a firm before you send money?

Check a firm before you send money because once it has reached a fraudster it rarely comes back, and checking takes an evening. It matters for protection too: complaint services and compensation schemes generally cover customers of authorised firms, so dealing with an unauthorised one can leave you with nowhere to turn if things go wrong.

Check every time, including when a friend or relative recommends the firm. They may be completely sincere and still wrong; some schemes pay early investors so that they'll bring in new ones. Check again whenever something changes: a new person handling your account, new bank details, a new app, or a suggestion to move your money somewhere else.

Being on a register doesn't make an investment safe or right for you. It tells you who you're dealing with and what they're allowed to do. Whether the investment itself makes sense is a separate question, and our checklist before you invest is a good place to work through it.

How do you check a firm on the regulator's register?

Find the register yourself: type the financial regulator's web address or use your own bookmark, and search for the firm's exact legal name and its reference or licence number. Then confirm three things: the status is current, the entity matches your documents, and the contact details on the register match what you've been sent.

1. Reach it on your own

   Search for the regulator yourself or type its address. Fake register pages exist, so never use a link from the firm, an advert or a message.

2. Search by name and by number

   Try the full legal name and the reference or licence number. Trading names often differ from legal ones, so make sure both lead to the same entry.

3. Read the status

   Look for a current status such as authorised or registered. If it reads cancelled, expired or no longer authorised, the firm may not provide regulated services to you.

4. Match the entity to your paperwork

   The company named in the terms, the website footer and the payment instructions should be the one on the register, not a near-identical name.

5. Note what you found

   Save a dated screenshot, or write down the reference number, status and registered contact details.

If the firm says it's based in another country, search that country's regulator too, and check it may serve customers where you live. Being authorised somewhere is not the same as being authorised everywhere.

Is the firm allowed to do what it's offering you?

A firm on the register may only do what its permissions cover. A firm permitted to arrange insurance or give mortgage advice isn't automatically allowed to hold your money or manage investments. Read the permissions listed on the register and match them, line by line, to the exact service you're being offered.

Registers tend to describe permissions in technical language, but the questions behind them are simple. If the firm will hold your money, may it hold client money? If it will choose investments for you, may it manage investments? If someone is recommending what you should buy, is the firm permitted to advise?

Watch for two common gaps. Some firms on a register act as agents of another firm, which takes responsibility for them; look up that firm too, and check the agent is listed under it. And some registers include businesses recorded for one narrow purpose, such as anti-money laundering supervision of crypto firms, without any authorisation to offer investments. Being registered in that sense is not an endorsement, whatever the website implies.

How do you spot a clone firm?

Put every contact detail you've received side by side with the register entry: web address, email domain, phone number and postal address. A clone borrows a genuine firm's name and reference number, so the entry itself looks right. What gives it away is how you're asked to get in touch, and where the money is meant to go.

Then ring the firm back on the number from the register, not the one you were given. Ask whether the person who contacted you works there, whether the product exists, and which account you would be paying. If the real firm has never heard of them, you've found a clone, and the regulator will want to know.

Never start these checks from a link someone sent you. A link can lead to a perfect copy of a register or of the firm's site; typing the address yourself closes that door.

What do warning lists tell you, and what don't they?

A regulator's warning list names firms and websites it believes are operating without permission or copying real firms. If the firm you're dealing with appears on it, stop. If it doesn't, that proves very little: scam outfits change names and web addresses often, and a new one may not have been reported yet.

Search the list more than once: by the firm's name, by its website address, and by any phone number or email you've been given. Scammers recycle contact details across different names, so a phone number can match even when the name doesn't.

An ordinary internet search helps as well. Try the firm's name alongside words such as scam, complaint or withdrawal. Treat online reviews with care, though, because glowing ones can be bought. And a firm that claims decades of experience, but whose company record or web address appeared only recently, has told you something important.

Who will hold your money, and in whose name?

Before you pay, ask who will actually keep your money and any investments you buy, and whose name will be on the account. With a genuine firm, client money usually sits with a bank or custodian, kept apart from the firm's own funds and recorded as yours. Paying a person's account is never acceptable.

Ask these questions in writing, and keep the replies. Vague or shifting answers are useful information in themselves.

• Which bank or custodian will hold my money, and is it named in the terms I'm signing?
• Is the account in my name, and is my money kept separate from the firm's own?
• Will statements come directly from the custodian or platform, not just from the person selling to me?
• Can withdrawals only be paid to a bank account in my own name, and how long do they take?
• What happens to my money and investments if the firm stops trading?

If the answer to 'where does my money go?' is a crypto wallet, a personal account or a company you can't find on any register, stop. That one answer outweighs everything else you've been told.

What should you get in writing before you pay?

Before you pay, get the full terms in writing from the firm itself: what you're buying, every fee and charge, how and when you can withdraw, any lock-in or exit penalty, how complaints are handled and which company you're contracting with. If a firm won't put something in writing, treat its promise as if it hadn't been made.

Read the fees section first. Ongoing charges, platform or account fees, dealing costs, currency conversion and exit charges can all apply, and together they can matter more over the years than the headline offer. If you can't tell what you'd pay in a typical year, ask for a worked example in money rather than percentages.

Then read what happens when you want your money back. Notice periods, minimum holding periods and 'bonuses' that only pay out if you stay are common in high-risk products, and they're a favourite device of scam platforms. Learning to read a platform's terms or a fund factsheet is part of our investing education sessions, if the documents feel impenetrable.

What should a firm-checking checklist include?

A good checklist records each check, where you looked, what you found and the date. It should cover the register and permissions, how the contact details compare, the call-back, warning-list searches, who would hold the money, and the written terms and fees. If any line ends in 'couldn't confirm', the safe default is to wait.

Keep the completed checklist with your documents. If you go ahead, it records why; if you don't, reporting a clone or an unauthorised firm to the regulator takes only minutes and may protect someone else. The pressure tactics scammers use are covered in our article on investment fraud red flags.

How can Ownvance help?

Ownvance can run these checks for you on a specific firm, broker, platform or 'account manager'. We check the register and permissions, look for clone signs, compare contact details, establish who would hold your money and read the terms, then give you a written record of what was confirmed and what wasn't. You decide what happens next.

That's our check a firm or offer service. It suits anyone who would rather not rely on their own reading of a register, or who wants a second pair of eyes before a large payment. We don't recommend firms or products, and no one but you pays us.

To begin, get in touch by email with the firm's name, the website or number you were given, and how the contact started. In the introductory consultation we agree exactly what will be checked, and the fixed fee is set out in a short engagement letter before work begins. How we work describes each step.