CySEC

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission. As an EU regulator it applies the same MiFID rules as BaFin, including the 30:1 retail leverage cap and mandatory negative balance protection. The difference is the payout: the Cyprus Investor Compensation Fund covers a maximum of €20,000 per covered client, well short of the UK figure. CySEC licenses a very large share of the retail brokers marketing into Europe, the Middle East and Africa, so the quality of firms under it varies more than the licence alone suggests.