Response to ESMA's announcement

RNS Number : 0983J

Plus500 Limited

27 March 2018

 

27 March 2018

Plus500 Ltd.

("Plus500" or "the Company")

Response to ESMA's announcement

Plus500, a leading online trading platform provider for customers to trade CFDs internationally, provides an update following today's announcements from ESMA and the FCA in which they outlined the regulatory changes ESMA proposes to implement in the coming weeks. The principal changes are:

·     leverage limits on the opening of a position by a retail client;

·     a margin close out rule on a per account basis;

·     negative balance protection on a per account basis;

·     a restriction on the incentives offered to trade CFD's; and

·     a standardised risk warning.

The Company acknowledges ESMA's announcement noting it already operates in compliance with most of these regulatory changes, including:

·     Plus500 has always offered negative balance protection to all customers across all its product offerings in all its markets;

·     the Company has always offered maintenance margin levels which enable its customers to have additional protection;

·     prominent risk disclosures are provided through all its marketing campaigns and on the Company website;

·     the Company stopped offering bonuses in most markets over the course of last year; and

·     the Company has never offered binary options.

As previously stated, Plus500 has welcomed and is already aligned with many of the changes proposed by regulators, which the Board believes will enhance the CFD trading landscape. Given the very strong start to 2018 trading, the Board believes there will be a limited impact on 2018's expected financial performance. The Board will assess the potential impact on future years, but believes that Plus500's highly flexible business model and global diversification with seven licenses in different jurisdictions, five of which are outside Europe, provide confidence in the Company's future prospects.

Plus500 is confident that since it is already attracting experienced customers that can be categorised as professionals, this will help mitigate the impact of these changes.

Plus500's trading platform has been developed in-house based on proprietary technology that does not rely on third party software suppliers and is supported solely by its internal technical expertise. This structure enables it to expedite implementation of regulatory changes efficiently and react quickly to dynamic market developments, representing a significant competitive advantage.  The Group also has a relatively low cost base which enables it to flex efficiently to market conditions.

Asaf Elimelech, CEO, commented:

"The new regulations are broadly as expected and can be implemented rapidly by Plus500 due to our industry leading in-house technology. We are already compliant in most of the areas targeted, will adapt our business model where changes are required and will continue to mitigate the impact due to our geographical diversification outside Europe. We believe the changes will be to the benefit of industry leaders such as Plus500 and to the detriment of the long tail of smaller and less compliant industry operators, resulting in a better outcome for CFD customers.

"We recently announced record results for 2017 and a very strong start to 2018, and are confident that we can become the market leading CFD provider based on new market opportunities and our excellent current performance."

Enquiries:

Plus500
Elad Even-Chen, Chief Financial Officer	[phone] [e-mail]
Liberum - Nomad and Broker
Clayton Bush, Neil Elliot, Josh Hughes	[phone]
Berenberg (Joint Broker)
Chris Bowman, Mark Whitmore	[phone]
MHP Communications
Reg Hoare, Tim Rowntree, Kelsey Traynor	[phone]

About Plus500

Plus500 operates an online trading platform for individual customers to trade CFDs internationally over more than 2,200 different underlying global financial instruments comprising equities, indices, commodities, options, ETFs, crypto currencies and foreign exchange. Individual customers of Plus500 can trade CFDs in more than 50 countries and in 32 languages. The trading platform is also accessible from multiple operating systems (Windows, smartphones (iOS, Android and Windows Phone), tablets (iOS, Android and Surface), and web browsers).

Plus500 retains operating licences and is regulated in the United Kingdom, Australia, Cyprus, Israel, New Zealand, South Africa and Singapore.  Customer care is integral to Plus500: customers cannot be subject to negative balances, there are no commissions on trades. Plus500 does not utilise cold calling techniques and does not offer binary options.  A free demo account is available on an unlimited basis for platform users and sophisticated risk management tools are provided free of charge to manage leverage and stop losses to help customers protect profits and limit capital losses.

www.plus500.com

 

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