Saxo Review 2026: A Systemically Important Bank That Left Australia

Quick facts

Denmark’s financial regulator lists seven systemically important institutions. Six are banks and mortgage lenders you would expect. The seventh is Saxo. That designation, and the two banking licences behind it, make Saxo the strongest fund-safety case we have recorded. It scores 8.1 rather than higher because its forex spreads are the widest of the five brokers we would put on a UK list, and because it quietly left Australia and the rest of the internet has not noticed.

Why we rated Saxo Trusted

1. Saxo is a designated systemically important financial institution

On 25 June 2026 Finanstilsynet, the Danish financial supervisory authority, published its annual designation of systemically important financial institutions. Seven were named:

• Danske Bank A/S
• Nykredit Realkredit A/S
• Jyske Bank A/S
• AL Sydbank A/S
• Nordea Kredit Realkreditaktieselskab
• DLR Kredit A/S
• Saxo Bank A/S

A SIFI designation is not a marketing badge. It is a supervisory judgement that the institution’s failure would damage the Danish financial system, and it brings higher capital requirements, closer supervision and resolution planning with it. Saxo sits on that list next to the largest bank in Denmark.

No other broker in our database is a SIFI anywhere. Saxo also states an investment-grade credit rating of A- from S&P, which is a second thing none of the others has.

2. Two banking licences, and both carry deposit insurance

Saxo Bank A/S is a Danish bank. Cash held with it is a bank deposit, covered by the Danish guarantee scheme at EUR 100,000 per depositor per bank. Securities held in custody carry a separate and smaller investor compensation limit of EUR 20,000 per investor, and the scheme states plainly that it “does not cover losses due to market fluctuations”, which is the right thing to say and more than most schemes bother to.

Saxo Bank (Schweiz) AG is a Swiss bank and appears on the esisuisse member list, which covers deposits to CHF 100,000 per client and bank. Swiss clients contract with that entity directly, under Swiss law, as Saxo’s own Swiss site says.

IG has one banking licence, in Switzerland. Saxo has two. Everyone else in the corpus has none.

3. The FCA record is the cleanest we have seen

Saxo Capital Markets UK Ltd, FRN 551422, has been Authorised since 5 October 2011 and can hold and control client money. It declares five names on the register, all of them Saxo’s own: Saxo Capital Markets UK Ltd, Saxo UK, Saxo, Saxo Markets and Saxo Capital Markets.

The previous-names table holds one entry, and it is a cosmetic change from “Limited” to “Ltd” in March 2025.

That is worth stating because we have just published the opposite. IG Markets Limited carries forty previous trading names, almost all other firms’ CFD brands. CMC Markets UK plc carries twenty-nine and CMC Spreadbet plc thirty-five, including two high-street banks and three gambling companies. Saxo has never rented its licence to anybody. Whether that matters to you is a judgement call, but it is a real structural difference between three firms that otherwise look alike, and the register is the only place it shows.

What holds the score down

Saxo has left Australia, and almost nobody has updated

Type home.saxo/en-au into a browser and you land on totality.com.au, whose page title reads “Totality (Formerly Saxo Australia)”.

AFCA’s member register confirms it. AFSL 280372 now belongs to Totality Wealth Limited, ACN 110128286, an AFCA member since 13 June 2008, and its former names are recorded as Commodity Broking Services Pty Ltd, Saxo Capital Markets (Australia) Pty Ltd and Saxo Capital Markets (Australia) Limited. There is no current Saxo entity in the register at all.

So an Australian reader researching Saxo today will find a great many pages, including comparison tables published this year, describing Saxo as ASIC-regulated under AFSL 280372. That licence is real and active. It is simply not Saxo’s any more.

This is the ordinary way broker information goes stale, and it is why checking the licence yourself beats reading a list. A licence number that checks out is not the same as a licence number that belongs to the firm you are reading about.

The advertised spread is not met by any of the three pairs on the same page

Saxo’s UK forex page carries the headline “Trade major FX pairs from 0.6 pips”. Directly beneath it, the same page lists three popular pairs:

None of the three is 0.6. The 0.6 presumably exists somewhere among the 185 pairs Saxo quotes, and the page does carry an honest caveat that the figures are indicative and vary by country of residence. But a reader who takes the headline at face value and trades the most popular pair in the world pays 0.7, not 0.6.

Against the other brokers we would put on a UK list, on each firm’s own published minimum:

Saxo is the widest on EUR/USD and USD/JPY and the tightest on GBP/USD. On forex specifically it is not the cheap option, and its own pricing pages do not pretend otherwise once you read past the headline.

One detail in that margin column is worth pulling out, because it cuts the other way. The FCA caps retail leverage on major pairs at 30:1, which is 3.33% margin. Saxo applies 3.33% to EURUSD but 4% to GBPUSD and USDJPY. It is requiring more margin than the regulator demands on two of the three pairs it chose to show. Brokers almost always offer the maximum permitted. Requiring more is a conservative choice that costs Saxo business, and it is the kind of thing that tends to correlate with the rest of the risk culture.

The fee schedule is a list of headings with no numbers

Saxo publishes investing commissions clearly: stocks and ETFs from 0.08%, bonds from 0.2%, mutual funds at zero commission and zero platform fee, across 23,000 stocks on 50 exchanges and 7,400 ETFs.

Its general charges page then lists fourteen other fees by name and gives the value of none of them on the page as it loaded for us. Inactivity fees, custody fees, currency conversion fee, manual order fee, transfer out fee, carrying cost, reporting fee, overnight financing on CFD positions and more are all headings that would not expand. Those are exactly the charges that decide what a buy-and-hold investor actually pays, and “other fees apply” at the bottom of the pricing page is not a substitute for publishing them where they can be read.

Ownership has changed twice in fifteen months

Nothing here is a problem, but a reader should know it.

On 10 March 2025 the J. Safra Sarasin Group agreed to acquire a majority stake in Saxo Bank. That acquisition completed on 2 March 2026. On 7 June 2026 a further agreement was announced to acquire the remaining stake of about 28.69% of Saxo Holding AG, held indirectly by founder Kim Fournais, which would take J. Safra Sarasin to 100%. That release states that “closing of the transaction is subject to standard regulatory approvals”, and Kim Fournais remains Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Saxo’s own about page now describes the acquisition as completed “resulting in full ownership”. We found no dated announcement that the final step has closed, so this review records the majority acquisition as complete and the move to 100% as announced and subject to approval. If you are reading this some months on, check which it is.

The entity map

Four entities verified at the regulator’s own source on 20 September 2026.

Three of the four carry a compensation scheme, and two of those three are deposit-insurance schemes rather than the thinner investor-compensation kind. Our guide on compensation schemes explains why that difference matters more than the headline number.

Not checked at source: Saxo’s Hong Kong, Netherlands, France, Japan and UAE operations, and Finanstilsynet’s enforcement record. We searched the FCA’s published documents and found no enforcement action against the UK entity. A narrower search than we ran on IG and CMC Markets, and the complaint pillar is scored to reflect that rather than to reward a clean result we did not fully test.

Who this suits

Saxo is built for someone holding a diversified portfolio across many markets who wants the institution holding it to be boring. Two banking licences, a SIFI designation, a credit rating and 71,000 instruments across stocks, bonds, funds, ETFs, options, futures and forex is a different proposition from a CFD shop with a tight EUR/USD spread.

If forex is most of what you do and cost is what decides it, the numbers above say CMC Markets and IG are cheaper on the majors, and the gap is not trivial over many round turns. Regulation and fund safety together carry 55% of the weight in our scoring method, which is why Saxo still lands where it does, but the method is not a recommendation and the cheapest place to trade forex is not this one.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Finanstilsynet, annual designation of systemically important financial institutions in Denmark, 25 June 2026, naming Danske Bank A/S, Nykredit Realkredit A/S, Jyske Bank A/S, AL Sydbank A/S, Nordea Kredit Realkreditaktieselskab, DLR Kredit A/S and Saxo Bank A/S. Checked 20 September 2026.

Garantiformuen, the Danish guarantee fund, at fs.dk: deposits covered to EUR 100,000 per depositor per bank; securities and investment-service compensation to EUR 20,000 per investor; and the statement that the protection does not cover losses due to market fluctuations. Checked 20 September 2026.

Financial Conduct Authority register, Saxo Capital Markets UK Ltd, FRN 551422: Authorised since 05/10/2011, can hold and control client money, 26th Floor 40 Bank Street London E14 5DA, five current declared names and a single previous name recording the change from Limited to Ltd on 21 March 2025. Checked 20 September 2026.

esisuisse member bank list, SAXO BANK (SCHWEIZ) AG, and esisuisse’s statement that protection is limited to CHF 100,000 per client and bank. Checked 20 September 2026.

Monetary Authority of Singapore Financial Institutions Directory, Saxo Capital Markets Pte. Ltd.: Capital Markets Services Licensee and Exempt Financial Adviser. Checked 20 September 2026.

Australian Financial Complaints Authority financial firm search: AFSL 280372 held by Totality Wealth Limited, ACN 110128286, member 12002, formerly Commodity Broking Services Pty Ltd, Saxo Capital Markets (Australia) Pty Ltd and Saxo Capital Markets (Australia) Limited. home.saxo/en-au observed redirecting to totality.com.au. Checked 20 September 2026.

home.saxo/about-us for the founding date, the SIFI and S&P A- claims, the instrument and client counts, and the ownership statement. home.saxo/en-gb/products/forex for the forex spreads and initial margins. home.saxo/en-gb/rates-and-conditions/pricing-overview for the investing commissions. Checked 20 September 2026.

Saxo and J. Safra Sarasin press releases: majority-stake acquisition agreed 10 March 2025 and completed 2 March 2026; agreement of 7 June 2026 to acquire the remaining stake of approximately 28.69% of Saxo Holding AG, with closing subject to standard regulatory approvals. Checked 20 September 2026.

Competitor spreads for the comparison are each firm’s own published minimum, recorded in our CMC Markets, IG and Capital.com reviews.

FCA register published documents searched for Saxo Capital Markets UK Ltd; no enforcement action found. Finanstilsynet’s enforcement record was not searched.

Answered in detail

Rated higher on the same scale

Rated Trusted or Neutral against the same six pillars. These link to our own reviews, not to the brokers, and no broker can pay to appear here.

Verdict changelog