HYCM’s regulatory structure was the best thing about it when we tested the broker across February and March 2026. Re-checking the registers before publishing this English edition, we found that structure has shrunk: the Cyprus licence was voluntarily surrendered in June 2024 and EU clients were let go, and control of the group left Henyep Group entirely in a management buyout effective 1 January 2024. What remains — an active FCA authorisation and an active DFSA licence in Dubai — is genuinely strong for the clients who actually sit under it. Most international clients do not. We score HYCM 7.0 out of 10 on the six weighted categories in our rating methodology. CFDs are leveraged products and most retail accounts lose money trading them.
Disclosure: we may earn a commission if you open an account through a link on this page. It does not change our scores, our findings, or where a broker places in our rankings. Read how we make money.
| Overall rating | 7.0/10 |
|---|---|
| Founded | UK entity incorporated 1993; trading as HYCM since 2016 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
| Main licences | FCA (UK) 186171, DFSA (Dubai) F000048, CIMA (Cayman Islands) 1442313; plus an unregulated Costa Rica company registration |
| Minimum deposit | $20 on all three account types; $250 by bank transfer |
| Spread from | 1.2 pips on Classic with no commission; 0.1 pips on Raw plus $4 per lot round turn |
| Maximum leverage | 1:30 retail under the FCA entity; up to 1:500 offshore |
| Instruments | About 300 CFDs, plus 1,000+ real shares through HYCM Invest |
| Swap-free account | Available on all three account types, 14-day grace period then $5 per contract per night |
| Retail loss rate | 70% of retail accounts lose money |
Pros and cons
We spent four weeks on a funded HYCM account across February and March 2026 — placing trades, moving money in and out, timing the support desk. What came back is a competent, unremarkable MetaTrader broker attached to a licence set that is better than most on paper and thinner than it looks in practice.
What works:
- An active FCA authorisation, FRN 186171, verifiable on the public register and confirmed active in July 2026
- A DFSA licence in the Dubai International Financial Centre, F000048, which few competitors of this size hold
- A $20 minimum deposit on every account type, among the lowest at this regulatory tier
- A genuine fixed-spread account, which has become rare — ours held at 1.5 pips on EUR/USD through a US payrolls release while variable spreads elsewhere widened to 3–5 pips
- Competitive Classic-account spreads: 1.2 pips on EUR/USD and 25 cents on gold when we sampled in February 2026, ahead of the three brokers we benchmarked against
- Third-party research most brokers do not license together: Trading Central, Seasonax and Financial Source
- Negative balance protection, and daily client-money segregation under FCA client asset rules
What does not:
- The CySEC licence is gone. HYCM surrendered it in June 2024 and no longer serves EU clients, which also removes the Cyprus investor compensation cover
- Clients outside the UK and the DIFC are onboarded offshore, with no compensation scheme — and one of the entities used is a Costa Rica company registration, which is not a financial-services licence at all
- The Henyep Group parentage the brand still trades on ended with a management buyout on 1 January 2024; HYCM is now owned by its own management
- The FCA-authorised entity is small: it filed a £236,000 pre-tax loss for 2025 and held £398,850 of client money at year-end
- No ASIC licence, so Australian clients get no local protection
- Around 300 CFDs — narrow against XM’s 1,000-plus or IG’s multi-thousand market count
- A $30 fee on bank withdrawals under $300, and a $10 monthly inactivity fee after 90 days
- Support runs 05:00–18:00 GMT on weekdays, leaving the Asian and late US sessions uncovered
- MT4 and MT5 only — no proprietary desktop platform, and the HYCM Trader app is mostly an account-management shell
Company information
The company behind the UK operation is HYCM Capital Markets (UK) Limited, registered at Companies House under number 02878581 and incorporated on 8 December 1993. It has carried four names in that time — it was Henyep Capital Markets (UK) Limited until 18 January 2022, and Henyep Investment (UK) Limited before 2010. The brand traded as HY Markets before consolidating on HYCM in 2016. Anyone reading an older review will see the Henyep name; the register no longer does.
That name change matters less than the ownership change behind it. The HYCM group was, for decades, the retail brokerage arm of Henyep Group, a Hong Kong conglomerate founded in 1977. That relationship ended. Control of the entire HYCM group was sold out of Henyep in a management buyout effective 1 January 2024, to two long-serving executives — Roger Bach, who had run the UK entity since 2005, and Stavros Lambouris, who had led international operations from Cyprus since 2014. The Dubai entity alone changed hands for £1.4 million, a figure equal to its net assets at the time. Bach retired in September 2024 and Lambouris bought out his stake, leaving Lambouris in sole control. Marcin Piotr Swanson-Zajac, previously head of risk at the UAE business, became CEO of the UK entity.
We flag this prominently because the “more than 40 years in the markets” line still appears across HYCM’s marketing and across most reviews of it. The trading operation does have a long continuous record, and surviving 2008, the 2015 Swiss franc break and 2020 is a real signal that few of the brokers we cover can offer. But the balance sheet of a Hong Kong conglomerate no longer sits behind it. HYCM is now a privately held, management-owned brokerage group, and should be assessed as one.
The UK entity’s own filings show the scale involved. It reported revenue of £981,000 for 2025 against £951,000 in 2024, and swung from a £1.25 million pre-tax profit to a £236,000 loss, driven by administrative expenses rising from £581,000 to £1.3 million. Client money held by the UK entity stood at £398,850 at year-end 2025. Filings are current with nothing overdue. The point is not that the numbers are alarming — a small entity can be perfectly sound, and the FCA sets capital requirements regardless — but the FCA-regulated company most readers picture is a modest operation, and the bulk of HYCM’s client base sits elsewhere.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| UK legal name | HYCM Capital Markets (UK) Limited (formerly Henyep Capital Markets (UK) Limited) |
| Companies House number | 02878581, incorporated 8 December 1993, status active |
| Ownership | Management-owned since the January 2024 buyout; Stavros Lambouris in sole control since late 2024 |
| Former parent | Henyep Group (Hong Kong), no longer in control |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
| Other offices and entities | Dubai (DIFC), Cayman Islands, Costa Rica |
| Markets served | 140-plus countries, excluding the EU since 2024, and excluding the US and Canada |
| UK entity 2025 result | £981,000 revenue, £236,000 pre-tax loss |
Who this broker suits (and who it does not)
HYCM suits a trader who wants a fixed-spread account from a regulated firm and cannot easily find one elsewhere. That is the clearest differentiator we found. When we ran the Fixed account through the February 2026 US employment release, the EUR/USD spread stayed at the advertised 1.5 pips while variable spreads at other brokers we were watching stretched to between 3 and 5 pips. If you trade around data releases and value knowing your cost before you click, that is worth paying for in quiet markets — which is the trade-off, because 1.5 pips fixed is expensive when the market is calm.
It also suits someone starting small. The $20 minimum on all three account types is unusually low for a firm holding an FCA authorisation, and it lets a beginner trade live money in genuinely small size before committing more. And it suits MetaTrader loyalists — anyone running Expert Advisors or a tested MT4 workflow will find nothing to relearn.
It does not suit EU residents, who cannot open an account at all since the Cyprus licence was surrendered. It does not suit Australian clients, because there is no ASIC licence and they are routed offshore without protection. It does not suit anyone who wants breadth: around 300 CFDs is thin, and if you want emerging-market equities, bonds or a wide ETF range you will run out of instruments quickly. It does not suit traders who need help at 2am — the support desk closes at 18:00 GMT. And it does not suit cost-focused scalpers, who will find tighter all-in pricing and faster fills at brokers built specifically for that.
Licensing and regulation
This was the strongest section of our original assessment and it is the section that moved most. We verified each licence directly against the regulators’ registers in February 2026 and again in July 2026 before publishing this edition.
| Regulator | Jurisdiction | Entity | Number | Status at July 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FCA | United Kingdom | HYCM Capital Markets (UK) Limited | 186171 | Active |
| DFSA | UAE (DIFC) | HYCM Capital Markets (DIFC) Limited | F000048 | Active |
| CIMA | Cayman Islands | HYCM Ltd | 1442313 | Active |
| None — company registry only | Costa Rica | HYCM Capital Markets S.R.L. | 3-102-883933 | Registered, not a financial licence |
| CySEC | Cyprus | HYCM (Europe) Ltd | 259/14 | Surrendered, withdrawn 19 June 2024 |
The CySEC line is the material change. HYCM did not lose that licence to enforcement — it gave it back. The firm began a voluntary renunciation of the Cyprus Investment Firm licence in March 2024, and CySEC recorded the withdrawal on 19 June 2024. HYCM stopped accepting EU clients and began terminating its existing EU book, returning client funds. No reason was disclosed publicly. The timing, immediately after the management buyout, suggests a decision about which markets the newly independent group wanted to service rather than anything adverse.
The consequence is worth stating plainly: HYCM had two tier-one licences and now has one. EU residents cannot open an account. The Cyprus Investor Compensation Fund cover of €20,000 that older reviews still cite — including our own Arabic edition, published before we caught this — does not exist for HYCM clients any more. We have removed it from every table on this page.
What survives is real for the people it covers. The FCA authorisation under FRN 186171 requires daily segregation of client money in separate bank accounts, negative balance protection for retail clients, appropriateness testing at onboarding, and leverage capped at 1:30 on major currency pairs. UK clients under this entity fall within the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £85,000. The DFSA licence in the DIFC applies a supervisory standard close to the European one and gives the group a physically present, locally supervised office in Dubai.
The offshore side is where the structure weakens, and it is where most clients end up. HYCM lists a Cayman Islands company, HYCM Ltd, under CIMA reference 1442313, and separately a Costa Rica company, HYCM Capital Markets S.R.L., registration 3-102-883933. A Costa Rica registration is a corporate filing, not a financial-services licence, and Costa Rica does not regulate forex brokerage in any meaningful sense. Public sources disagree about which offshore entity a given international client is routed to, and we could not establish that definitively at the time of publication — so we are not going to claim a specific answer. What is consistent across sources, and what actually matters, is that clients outside the UK and the EU carry no investor-protection cover at all. Ask which legal entity your account will sit under, get the answer in writing, and treat it as the most important question in the whole onboarding process. The Arabic edition of this review framed the entity choice as a matter of degree between DFSA and CIMA; that understated it.
The FCA clone-firm warnings
Searching “HYCM FCA warning” returns hits, and they need explaining rather than ignoring. The FCA warning list carries an entry titled “HycmCapitalMarkets (clone of FCA authorised firm)”, published 7 January 2022, naming the website hycmcapitalmarkets.com, the address [email protected] and the telephone numbers +18508951368 and +447418347440. A second, older entry targets “Henyep Markets”, the firm’s former trading name.
Both are clone warnings. They describe criminals copying HYCM’s real name and real reference number to appear authorised, which is a warning about the brand rather than a finding against the firm. The FCA’s own entry gives the genuine contact details as 51 Moorgate, London EC2R 6LL and the domain hycm.co.uk, and the underlying authorisation is unaffected. We found no enforcement action, fine, penalty, licence suspension, revocation or unauthorised-solicitation advisory against any HYCM entity on the FCA, CySEC, DFSA or CIMA registers as at 27 July 2026. The practical instruction is the ordinary one: reach the broker by typing the address yourself, and check the reference number on the FCA register rather than trusting a number quoted in an email.
Opening an account and verification
We opened a live account in February 2026 and the process was tidy. Personal details — name, email, phone, country of residence — took about three minutes. Then came the suitability questionnaire covering trading experience, financial position and source of income, which is a regulatory requirement rather than a sales device and cannot be skipped.
Identity documents came next: passport or national ID, plus proof of address no more than three months old, in the form of a bank statement or utility bill. We uploaded PDFs with no file-size or format problems. Verification came back approved in one business day, with an email confirming activation. That is at the fast end — the industry norm is one to three business days.
Base currency options at the time of our testing were USD, EUR, GBP, JPY and AED. Choosing one that matches your funding currency avoids a conversion charge on every deposit and withdrawal, and it is worth a moment’s thought because changing it later is not self-service.
One friction point: changing account type after opening requires contacting support and waiting, rather than a toggle in the client area. Decide between Fixed, Classic and Raw before you finish signing up. A free demo account is available without any deposit, and using it for a fortnight before funding is the sensible sequence.
Account types
Three live accounts, differentiated purely on how you pay for execution. We traded on Classic and Raw during our testing window and sampled Fixed through a news release.
| Feature | Fixed | Classic | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spread type | Fixed | Variable | Variable |
| Spread from | 1.5 pips | 1.2 pips | 0.1 pips |
| Commission | None | None | $4 per lot round turn on FX, $5 on metals |
| Minimum deposit | $20 | $20 | $20 |
| Platforms | MT4, MT5 | MT4, MT5 | MT4, MT5 |
| Expert Advisors | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Swap-free option | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Fixed holds its spread regardless of conditions. Ours stayed at 1.5 pips on EUR/USD through a payrolls release. The cost of that certainty is that you pay 1.5 pips in a quiet London afternoon when the variable accounts are showing 1.2 or less. It is a hedge, and like any hedge it has a premium.
Classic is the commission-free middle option. Trading it during London hours in February 2026, we saw EUR/USD sit between 1.2 and 1.8 pips in normal conditions, widening to 3–4 pips around major data. Reasonable, and the account most casual traders will end up on.
Raw is the cheapest for anyone trading with any frequency. We measured EUR/USD between 0.1 and 0.5 pips during peak hours; adding the $4 round-turn commission, worth roughly 0.4 pips on a standard lot, gives an all-in cost near 0.9 pips against Classic’s 1.2. The commission itself is competitive — many brokers charge $6 to $7 per lot on their raw-spread tiers.
Leverage is entity-dependent and the headline number is misleading. The advertised 1:500 maximum applies offshore. Under the FCA entity, retail leverage is capped at 1:30 on major currency pairs and 1:20 on minors, as the rules require. DFSA limits differ again. If leverage is central to your plan, establish your entity first — and be clear that higher leverage is not a feature you are being given, it is protection you are giving up.
The swap-free option
Swap-free trading is available on all three account types, and the mechanism is worth understanding because brokers implement it very differently. HYCM removes overnight interest entirely, then applies an administration charge of $5 per open contract per night once a position has been held for 14 days. We requested the conversion during testing and it was applied within one business day.
The 14-day grace period covers most short and medium-term positions at no cost at all, which is the appeal. The weakness is at the other end: $5 per contract per night is a heavy charge on a genuinely long-held position, and it compounds quietly — a single contract held for a further month costs $150. Some competitors offer longer grace periods or no administration fee at all, so compare before assuming swap-free means free — we priced the terms at the best swap free brokers side by side. Traders who use these accounts to avoid interest for reasons of religious observance should note that removing the swap addresses one element only; whether leveraged CFDs are permissible in the first place is a separate question for a qualified scholar rather than a broker. Forex, commodities and indices are covered; confirm the instrument list with support, as it varies.
Fees and trading costs
We sampled spreads across active London and New York hours during February 2026, on commission-free standard accounts at each broker, so the comparison is like for like. These were the averages we recorded at the time.
| Instrument | HYCM (Classic) | Equiti (Standard) | Amana (Classic) | XM (Standard) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EUR/USD | 1.2 pips | 1.4 pips | 1.4 pips | 1.6 pips |
| GBP/USD | 1.7 pips | 1.6 pips | 1.9 pips | 2.1 pips |
| USD/JPY | 1.4 pips | 1.5 pips | 1.6 pips | 1.6 pips |
| AUD/USD | 1.6 pips | 1.8 pips | 2.0 pips | 1.8 pips |
| USD/CHF | 1.6 pips | 1.7 pips | 1.8 pips | 2.1 pips |
| Gold (XAU/USD) | 25 cents | 30 cents | 35 cents | 30 cents |
| Oil (WTI) | 5 cents | 5 cents | 6 cents | 4 cents |
HYCM won five of the seven, most clearly on EUR/USD and gold. Equiti edged it on GBP/USD, and the Standard account in our XM review edged it on WTI. This is a good result for a commission-free account, and it is the strongest argument for the broker after the FCA licence. Spreads widened noticeably in two windows: the first hour after the Sunday open, and around major economic releases, when EUR/USD on Classic reached 3–4 pips. That is normal market behaviour rather than a broker failing, but it is the cost you actually pay if you trade the news.
Overnight financing sat close to the sector average when we checked, with the standard triple charge applied on Wednesdays to cover the weekend. Current rates are visible inside MT4 or MT5 by right-clicking an instrument and opening its specification, which is more reliable than any figure published in a review, including this one.
The non-trading fees are where HYCM gives ground. Deposits are free on every method. Withdrawals are free above $300, but a bank transfer below $300 attracts a $30 fee, and e-wallet withdrawals above $5,000 through Skrill or Neteller carry 1%. A $30 charge on a $250 withdrawal is 12% of the amount, which is a genuinely poor outcome for a small account — and small accounts are exactly who the $20 minimum deposit invites. Inactivity costs $10 a month after 90 days without a login, deducted until the balance reaches zero; accounts already at zero are not charged. That is milder than some peers, but 90 days is a short trigger, and a login every quarter avoids it entirely.
Desktop platforms
MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, and nothing else. We ran both on Windows 11 for a week in February 2026. Installation took under five minutes, and the credentials emailed at account opening worked immediately.
MT4 delivered what MT4 always delivers: 30-plus built-in indicators, nine timeframes, three chart types, full Expert Advisor support and backtesting through the Strategy Tester. It was stable throughout, with no crashes or disconnections in our testing. MT5 adds 21 timeframes, 38 indicators, depth of market, an embedded economic calendar and six pending order types rather than four. It loaded historical data faster and was the better of the two for detailed technical work.
Both are available in-browser without installation. The web build covers most of the desktop functionality but is weaker on automated trading and deep customisation.
The absence of a proprietary desktop platform is a real gap. The upside of MetaTrader-only is familiarity and an enormous third-party ecosystem of indicators and expert advisors. The downside is that competitors building their own platforms have moved well ahead on interface design, integrated analytics and charting quality, and HYCM has nothing to answer with.
Mobile apps
Three options: HYCM’s own HYCM Trader app, plus the official MT4 and MT5 apps. We tested all three on an iPhone 15 and a Samsung Galaxy S24 in February 2026.
HYCM Trader is essentially an account portal — clean, easy to navigate, good for checking positions, depositing and withdrawing. It handles basic order entry but does not approach the MetaTrader apps for charting or technical analysis depth, and it lacks the one-tap trading that competing proprietary apps offer.
The MT4 app is the fuller trading experience: interactive charts, 30 indicators, every order type. We placed 20 test orders through it and saw no delays, disconnections or failures. Price alerts fired reliably and on time. MT5 adds depth of market, the economic calendar and the extra order types, and was marginally faster loading data and more stable when switching between charts.
The structural annoyance is having to move between two apps — HYCM Trader for money, MetaTrader for trading. Brokers with a single unified app have a cleaner answer, and this split is the kind of thing that confuses newer traders at exactly the wrong moment.
Trading tools
Around 300 CFD instruments, which we counted against the broker’s published list during our February 2026 review.
| Asset class | Approximate count | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Forex pairs | 70+ | Majors, minors and exotics including USD/TRY and USD/ZAR |
| Share CFDs | 100+ | Large-cap US and European names |
| Indices | 15+ | S&P 500, NASDAQ 100, FTSE 100, DAX 40, Nikkei 225 |
| Commodities | 14 | Gold, silver, WTI, Brent, natural gas, agricultural contracts |
| Cryptocurrencies | 28 | CFDs only, not available to UK retail clients |
The forex range is solid. We traded exotics including USD/TRY and USD/ZAR and found spreads predictably wide but execution clean. Commodities reflect the group’s origins in precious metals dealing, and the 25-cent gold spread we measured beat the roughly 28-cent sector average at the time. Crypto is CFD-only, meaning no ownership of the underlying asset, and is off-limits to UK retail clients under FCA rules.
The weakness is breadth. Around 300 CFDs is thin against XM’s 1,000-plus, IG’s multi-thousand market count or Saxo’s far larger universe. If you want emerging-market equities, bonds or a broad ETF selection, HYCM will run out before you do. Counting differently produces a combined symbol figure closer to 1,199, and some review sites publish that number without saying what is in it. The difference is HYCM Invest — a separate and genuinely useful service offering commission-free dealing in over 1,000 real shares with fractional ownership, aimed at long-term investors rather than CFD traders. It is worth having, but it does not widen the CFD range, and the criticism stands where it applies.
Order execution
We placed 50 trades on a funded live account during February 2026 to assess execution quality. HYCM operates a no-dealing-desk model, routing orders to liquidity providers without a dealing desk intervening, which means real market pricing, occasional slippage and no requotes.
Of the 50 orders, 43 filled inside one second. Five showed a delay of one to two seconds, all of them during high-volatility periods. Two experienced slippage: 0.5 pips in our favour on one, 0.3 pips against us on the other. No requotes and no rejected orders. Those numbers sit comfortably within normal industry performance — good, not exceptional, and short of the brokers that compete specifically on execution speed.
Order types on MT4 cover market orders, four pending types (buy limit, sell limit, buy stop, sell stop) and stop-loss and take-profit. MT5 adds buy stop limit and sell stop limit for more complex entries.
Execution during the February 2026 US payrolls release was visibly slower with pronounced slippage. That happens at every broker during major releases and is not a HYCM-specific fault, but if your strategy depends on precise fills through news, plan for it rather than assuming the averages above will hold.
Deposits
We funded the account with $500 by Visa in February 2026. The money appeared in the trading account in under an hour, matching what the broker advertises.
| Method | Minimum | Processing time | Broker fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visa / Mastercard | $20 | Under one hour | None |
| Bank transfer | $250 | 3–7 business days | None (your bank may charge) |
| Skrill | $20 | Under one hour | None |
| Neteller | $20 | Under one hour | None |
| AstroPay | $20 | Instant | None |
| WebMoney | $20 | Instant | None |
| Cryptocurrency | $20 | Network confirmations | None |
HYCM charges nothing on deposits by any method, which is worth crediting because it is no longer universal. Your own bank or card issuer may still apply an international transaction fee, and that is outside the broker’s control.
The bank transfer route is the outlier: a $250 minimum against $20 everywhere else, and up to seven business days. For small deposits, use a card or an e-wallet.
Withdrawals
We requested a $300 withdrawal to the funding Visa card in February 2026. HYCM approved it within one business day, and the money reached our bank account four business days after that — five business days end to end. That is mid-pack. Faster brokers settle card withdrawals in two to three days.
| Method | Minimum | Time to arrive | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visa / Mastercard | $20 | 3–7 business days | Free above $300 |
| Bank transfer | $20 | 3–7 business days | $30 if under $300 |
| Skrill | $20 | 1–3 business days | 1% above $5,000 |
| Neteller | $20 | 1–3 business days | 1% above $5,000 |
HYCM applies a same-method policy as an anti-money-laundering control: funds must return by the route they arrived, up to the amount deposited. Deposit $500 by Visa and the first $500 out goes back to that Visa. Profits above that can leave by another available method. This is standard practice and not a red flag, but it does constrain planning.
We withdrew successfully with no obstruction. In fairness, some users on public review platforms have reported withdrawal delays, most plausibly linked to additional verification triggered by larger sums or by changes to account details. We did not experience that on a $300 request, and we cannot verify individual complaints — but the mitigation is worth repeating: keep verification documents current before you request money, and expect extra questions on large amounts.
One practical note: above $5,000, use a bank transfer rather than Skrill or Neteller, because the 1% e-wallet charge on a $10,000 withdrawal is $100 against nothing on a transfer.
Customer support
We contacted the support desk repeatedly across four weeks through several channels. Live chat, email and telephone are available, alongside an unusually wide set of messaging options including WhatsApp, Telegram, Skype, Viber and Facebook Messenger. Support is offered in English and several other languages.
Live chat during business hours answered in roughly one minute, which is fast. The agents we spoke to gave accurate, specific answers on account types and trading costs rather than deflecting to a knowledge base. Email was slower: a technical question about leverage settings came back in 18 hours with a detailed and complete answer. Acceptable, not quick.
The clear weakness is hours. Live support runs 05:00 to 18:00 GMT on weekdays only. Markets do not. That leaves the Asian session and the late US session with no live cover at all, which for a broker serving 140-plus countries is a meaningful gap — and it is why this category scores lowest of the six. If you hit a margin problem at 22:00 GMT, you are waiting until morning.
HYCM does maintain a staffed office in the DIFC in Dubai. Dealing with a physically present, locally supervised team is worth something that a ticket queue is not, particularly if a dispute ever needs escalating.
Research and education
The research stack is the genuine surprise here. HYCM licenses three third-party services that most competitors do not offer together: Trading Central, Seasonax and Financial Source.
Trading Central, founded in 1999 with offices across New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong, produces automated technical analysis on hundreds of instruments. Using it through HYCM, we found the signals came with clearly marked support and resistance levels and updated frequently enough to be useful rather than decorative. Seasonax analyses seasonal patterns across more than 20,000 instruments — a niche tool, but a real one if historical recurrence forms part of your process. Financial Source supplies real-time news and economic commentary. Having all three bundled is a competitive advantage for anyone who leans on technical analysis. None of it predicts anything, and it should be treated as input rather than instruction.
Education is more ordinary: written tutorials from basic to advanced, video lessons, live and recorded webinars, and ebooks. A YouTube channel carries over 300 recorded videos and around 100 guest interviews covering technical analysis, fundamentals and trading psychology. The material is competent and free, and enough to get a beginner oriented. It thins out at the advanced end, where XM and several others go considerably deeper.
On transparency, the picture is mixed. HYCM is privately held and publishes no group accounts, but the UK entity files at Companies House and those numbers are inspectable by anyone — which is more than several offshore competitors offer. Against that, the marketing still leans on the Henyep heritage and on awards from 2020, 2022 and 2023 without noting that the parent relationship ended in January 2024, and the site does not make the entity-and-protection question easy to answer. Those are presentation failures rather than disclosure breaches, but they are the sort of thing a reader is entitled to have pointed out.
Fund safety and protections
Broker fund safety at HYCM depends almost entirely on which entity holds your account, and the gap between the best and worst case is very wide.
Client money segregation. Under FCA client asset rules, the UK entity must hold client funds in separate bank accounts, reconciled daily, and cannot use them for its own purposes. This is the single most important protection and it applies at the entity level.
FSCS cover. Clients of the FCA-authorised entity are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £85,000 each if the firm fails and cannot return their money. This is strong, and it is the reason to prefer the UK entity if you are eligible for it.
Cyprus ICF cover — no longer applicable. Older reviews, ours included, listed €20,000 of Investor Compensation Fund cover under the CySEC entity. That entity surrendered its licence in June 2024. This protection does not exist for HYCM clients any more, and any source still citing it is out of date.
Negative balance protection. Offered across the client base, meaning a violent market move cannot leave you owing more than you deposited. The broker absorbs the shortfall and resets the balance to zero.
Offshore clients have no compensation scheme. Clients outside the UK and the EU are onboarded through the offshore side of the group and carry no investor-protection cover at all. Segregation and negative balance protection still apply as matters of company policy, but policy is not a statutory backstop, and a Costa Rica company registration in particular carries no supervisory oversight of any kind. For most international readers of this review, this is the applicable row of the table below — not the FSCS one.
| Protection | HYCM (FCA entity) | HYCM (offshore) | Equiti | XM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Segregated client money | Yes, rule-based | Yes, by policy | Yes (FCA) | Yes (CySEC) |
| Compensation scheme | FSCS to £85,000 | None | FSCS to £85,000 | ICF to €20,000 |
| Negative balance protection | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Statutory conduct supervision | Yes | Limited to none | Yes | Yes |
None of this changes the underlying arithmetic of the product. HYCM’s current published disclosure states that 70% of retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with it; when we tested in early 2026 the published figure was 75%, and the number is entity-specific and revised periodically. Regulatory protection covers what happens if the broker fails. It does nothing about what happens if your trades do.
Verdict
HYCM scores 7.0 out of 10, on the same scale as every one of our broker reviews. Our Arabic edition, published in March 2026, scored it the equivalent of 8.2. The category that moved is regulation and licensing, and it moved for reasons the original testing could not have caught from inside the platform: the Cyprus licence was surrendered in June 2024, taking a tier-one regulator and the Cyprus compensation cover with it; control of the group left Henyep ownership in a management buyout effective January 2024, so the conglomerate backing the brand still markets is no longer there; and the offshore route that most international clients are actually onboarded through offers no compensation scheme, with one of the entities involved holding a Costa Rica company registration rather than any financial licence. None of that is a scandal. All of it changes what a reader is buying.
What is left is a decent broker with two clear strengths. The FCA and DFSA licences are real, verifiable and better than most of the field for the clients who sit under them. The Classic-account spreads we measured beat all three comparison brokers on five of seven instruments, and the fixed-spread account is a genuine differentiator that held its pricing through a news release when others did not.
The weaknesses are consistent rather than severe. Around 300 CFDs is narrow. Withdrawals took five business days and cost $30 if you take out less than $300 by transfer, which punishes exactly the small accounts the $20 minimum attracts. Support closes at 18:00 GMT. There is no proprietary platform. And the FCA-authorised company that provides the headline protection is a small business that lost £236,000 in 2025 and held under £400,000 of client money — sound enough, but not the institution the marketing implies.
Choose HYCM if you specifically want a fixed-spread account from a regulated firm, or you want to start with very little money at this regulatory tier, and you are eligible for the UK entity. Look elsewhere if you are in the EU, where you cannot open an account at all; if you need a wide instrument range; if you need support outside European hours; or if you are chasing the lowest possible all-in cost. Whichever way you go, confirm in writing which legal entity your account will sit under before you fund it — that single answer determines most of your protection. Trading CFDs on leverage carries a high risk of rapid loss, and most retail clients lose money. Never trade with funds you cannot afford to lose.
Is HYCM trustworthy?
Is HYCM a scam?
No. HYCM holds an active FCA authorisation under FRN 186171, an active DFSA licence F000048 in the Dubai International Financial Centre, and a CIMA registration in the Cayman Islands. We verified these against the regulators’ own registers in July 2026. We found no enforcement action, fine, penalty, licence suspension or revocation against any HYCM entity. The UK company has filed at Companies House continuously since 1993 with nothing overdue. We deposited, traded and withdrew our own money without obstruction. The legitimate criticism is not fraud — it is that the protection you get depends heavily on which entity you are placed with, and the weakest option carries none.
Why does an FCA warning come up when I search for HYCM?
Because criminals have cloned the firm. The FCA warning list carries “HycmCapitalMarkets (clone of FCA authorised firm)”, published 7 January 2022, naming the site hycmcapitalmarkets.com and two telephone numbers, plus an older alert against the former “Henyep Markets” name. A clone warning means fraudsters are copying a real authorised firm’s name and reference number to look legitimate — it is a warning about the brand, not a finding against the broker, and HYCM’s authorisation is unaffected. Type the address yourself rather than following a link from an email, and check the reference number on the FCA register directly.
Did HYCM lose its Cyprus licence?
It gave it back rather than losing it. HYCM (Europe) Ltd voluntarily renounced CIF licence 259/14, and CySEC recorded the withdrawal on 19 June 2024. The firm stopped accepting EU clients and returned funds to its existing EU book. This was not an enforcement outcome and no regulator sanctioned the firm. But the practical effects are real: EU residents can no longer open an account, and the €20,000 Cyprus compensation cover that older reviews cite no longer applies to anyone.
Is HYCM still owned by Henyep Group?
No. Control of the HYCM group passed out of Henyep Group in a management buyout effective 1 January 2024, to executives Roger Bach and Stavros Lambouris. Bach retired in September 2024 and Lambouris acquired his stake, leaving Lambouris in sole control. HYCM is now an independent, management-owned group. The heritage claims that reference more than 40 years in the markets describe the former parent, not current ownership or current backing.
Can I actually get my money out?
We did. Our $300 Visa withdrawal in February 2026 was approved within one business day and settled four business days later. Some users on public review platforms report longer waits, most plausibly where extra verification was triggered by a large amount or a change of account details. Keep your documents current and expect additional checks on larger sums. Note the same-method rule: funds return by the route they arrived, up to the amount deposited.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum deposit at HYCM?
$20 by card or e-wallet, on all three account types — Fixed, Classic and Raw. Bank transfers require a $250 minimum. Base currency options at the time of our testing were USD, EUR, GBP, JPY and AED.
What does trading with HYCM cost?
It depends on the account. Fixed starts at 1.5 pips with no commission. Classic starts at 1.2 pips with no commission. Raw starts at 0.1 pips with $4 per lot round turn on forex and $5 on metals, giving an all-in cost near 0.9 pips on EUR/USD in our measurements — cheaper than Classic for anyone trading with frequency. Add $10 a month in inactivity fees after 90 days without a login, and a $30 charge on bank withdrawals below $300.
Does HYCM offer a swap-free account?
Yes, on all three account types. Overnight interest is removed entirely, with a 14-day grace period before an administration charge of $5 per open contract per night applies. Our conversion request was processed in one business day. The grace period covers most short and medium-term positions at no cost; the nightly charge becomes expensive on long-held positions, so compare it against competitors before assuming swap-free means free.
How long do HYCM withdrawals take?
HYCM approved our request within one business day. Arrival then depends on the method: one to three business days by e-wallet, three to seven by card or bank transfer. Our $300 card withdrawal took five business days end to end when we tested in February 2026. Withdrawals are free above $300; below that, a bank transfer costs $30.
What platforms does HYCM offer?
MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 on desktop, web and mobile, plus the HYCM Trader mobile app for account management and basic order entry. There is no proprietary desktop platform. Expert Advisors and automated strategies are supported on all account types.
Can EU or Australian traders open an HYCM account?
EU residents cannot — HYCM stopped serving the EU when it surrendered its Cyprus licence in June 2024. There is no ASIC licence either, so Australian clients would be onboarded offshore with no compensation scheme. UK residents are served by the FCA-authorised entity with FSCS cover up to £85,000. HYCM does not accept clients from the United States or Canada.
How much leverage does HYCM offer?
The advertised maximum of 1:500 applies offshore only. Retail clients under the FCA entity are capped at 1:30 on major currency pairs and 1:20 on minors, as UK rules require. DFSA limits differ again. Higher leverage magnifies losses as readily as gains, and it is a large part of why most retail CFD accounts lose money.
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