Focus Markets Review Australia 2026

Is Focus Markets safe? ASIC AFSL 514425

Yes, Focus Markets holds ASIC AFSL 514425, current since 7 March 2019, with no conditions added since commencement, and that unchanged condition record is part of the safety picture, but the broker will cease operations on 30 October 2026.

The licence sits with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and authorises advice, dealing and market making in derivatives and foreign exchange contracts to retail and wholesale clients.

The licence carries no securities authorisation, which is why everything offered here, shares included, is a contract for difference rather than the underlying asset.

Focus Markets closes on 30 October 2026

Focus Markets will cease operations on 30 October 2026 while a sale of the Focus Markets Group to investors takes place, according to an email the broker sent to its clients. The email states that all open positions must be closed and all trading accounts will be terminated by the end of the trading day on 30 October 2026, and it asks clients to close any open positions and withdraw all remaining funds before that date. Any position not closed before that date will be closed by Focus Markets, and any remaining funds will stay available for withdrawal from the Focus Markets Group. What is not known is who the buyer is, what the sale terms are, or what happens to AFSL 514425 or the company after 30 October 2026.

The email gives customerservice@focusmarkets.com as the contact for help with a withdrawal. On 1 October 2026 the Focus Markets public website, focusmarkets.com and its /au/ page, redirected to the client login portal, and no closure notice appeared on the public pages.

The entity Australians contract with

Australian residents cannot contract with anything else, and that is the finding I would want before funding an account here. Running the registration portal from an Australian connection on 26 July 2026, the entity dropdown offered Focus Markets Pty Ltd alone, and switching the country to Indonesia flipped it to Focus Markets Ltd of Saint Lucia. Every non-Australian path on the domain also redirects to the Australian site, so the offshore offer stays unreachable from an Australian connection.

That entity containment is worth crediting. Several brokers in this coverage leak an offshore entity through an unguarded link, and this one does not.

Before depositing, confirm Focus Markets holds AFSL 514425 using the site's guide to checking a broker on ASIC's register.

Focus Markets entity history and the licence record

Focus Markets has held AFSL 514425 since 2019, and the licence record shows seven corporate authorised representatives and six registered business names, one of them current.

The entity history shows this licence has carried several brands rather than a single clean storefront.

Five licence dates matter, and I would not trust my memory to keep them straight. The licence entity was registered on 3 March 2014 as RGM FX Pty Ltd, AFSL 514425 commenced on 7 March 2019, the company was renamed Focus Markets Pty Ltd on 5 July 2019, design and distribution obligations began on 5 October 2021, and the current Target Market Determination was published on 4 July 2025. Those are the timeline to use when checking the ASIC record.

Anzo Capital was appointed six days after the licence commenced, which shows how early the multi-brand pattern began. The licence has carried six registered business names on the same ABN alongside those appointments: RGM Forex, Anzo Capital Group, Finesse Markets Group, Place a Trade Group, Guru One Group and the current DNA Markets Group.

The licence record shows no breach and no imposed condition, and it is a different profile from a broker that has run one brand for ten years. The part I keep coming back to is that no founding year, parent or owner is disclosed, and the shareholders of this private company are not free-searchable. For field comparison, the ranking of the safest forex brokers in Australia is the reference. The entity appointed Ernst and Young as licensee auditor on 18 May 2026.

Is Focus Markets legal in Australia?

Yes, Focus Markets is legal in Australia through Focus Markets Pty Ltd, licensed by ASIC under AFSL 514425, and it will cease operations on 30 October 2026.

Focus Markets client money protection and AFCA

Focus Markets client money protection runs through a dedicated client trust account under the Corporations Act. AFCA hears claims up to A$1,263,000 and awards compensation up to A$631,500.

Those caps matter if recovery is ever needed after a dispute, and I would want them stated before choosing a broker.

The retail client money account is co-mingled with other clients’ funds, which is standard but means client money sits with other traders’ funds. The negative balance margin protection applies under PDS clause 6.3, and that clause carries a cross-account net-off provision worth reading if more than one account is held. The margin call fires at 80% and liquidation at or below 50%.

Payments under the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort cap at A$150,000 and cover only personal advice, securities dealing and credit, so forex and CFD trading complaints never reach it. That is a useful distinction to keep in mind if the assumption is that every loss has a backstop. The licence documents name AFCA as the external dispute resolution scheme, in the June 2025 Financial Services Guide.

No AFCA membership figure appears on this page deliberately, and I would rather show nothing than a figure nothing supports. A record exists under the Focus Markets name, and the ACN and licence number on it do not match what ASIC and the Australian Business Register hold for this company, so checks would not line up.

Focus Markets Trustpilot rating

Focus Markets holds a Trustpilot rating of 3.3 out of 5 from 6 reviews, which Trustpilot labels average, captured October 2026. The profile has been claimed by the broker since January 2026.

The review comparison rests on six entries, a sample rather than a rating, which is why it stays out of this page’s structured data. Trustpilot notes the company has not invited customers recently, so the handful it has are self-selected and may not match your Australian experience. The review comparison covers the global domain rather than the Australian entity, so it mixes Australian and overseas clients. No TradingView broker profile exists, which follows from the platform decision.

What traders say about Focus Markets

Public ratings of Focus Markets from the rating sites that list it, showing the number of reviews or ratings behind each score and the month it was captured.

Rating site	Rating	Based on	Who rated	Captured
Trustpilot	3.3 out of 5	6 reviews	Worldwide	October 2026

Each row above is a public rating of Focus Markets taken from a rating site, dated to the month its figure was captured. An App Store rating counts ratings left on Apple's Australian App Store only, while a Trustpilot figure counts reviews and a TradingView figure counts ratings from anywhere in the world. A site with no row has no rating for Focus Markets, withholds it, cannot be matched to Focus Markets with confidence, or we have not captured it yet.

How popular is Focus Markets in Australia?

Focus Markets is searched too rarely in Australia for month-on-month change to be meaningful: 50 branded searches in September 2026, 32nd of 33. Search interest measures attention, not quality; the score above is the review verdict.

32of 33Search interest rank

50

Brand searches, September 2026

n/a below 1,000

vs August 2026

0

Login searches

0.0%

Share of all broker searches

Source: Google search volume, Australia, September 2026. How this is measured

Focus Markets key facts

Focus Markets Pty Ltd holds ASIC AFSL 514425, current since 7 March 2019, and lists more than 800 CFDs on MetaTrader 5 alone. The 18 key facts sit in the table below.

I rely on those facts, which cover the entity, the platform and the fee schedule.

The commission row carries no currency because the broker states none, and the section below sets out what else is missing.

Focus Markets Standard and Raw account pricing

Focus Markets spreads follow a two-way split with Standard at an advertised 1.0 pips spread-only and Raw at an advertised 0.0 pips with a commission of 3.50 per side per standard lot.

Both accounts provide the full instrument range and run on the same platform, so in my view the decision is purely which pricing shape suits volume. No product range is gated behind either one.

Neither headline figure is attached to a currency pair, and the commission carries no currency label. That pricing combination matters more than it sounds, because you cannot work out your round-turn cost before funding the account, and I would want that resolved. The next section sets out exactly what is missing.

Focus Markets non-trading fees

• Overnight financing applies to positions held past the New York close, at 00:00 platform time, with the platform set to GMT+3. Triple swap falls on Wednesday for forex and Friday for other classes.
• Currency conversion: PDS clause 13.10 reserves an additional fee or spread on the conversion rate, and the quantum is not disclosed.
• Deposits and withdrawals carry no broker-side fee, though intermediary bank fees can apply on transfers.
• No inactivity fee appears in the June 2025 PDS. Clause 13.7 does allow exchange fees to be passed on, or CFD access to be removed, when an account sits idle.
• Guaranteed stop-loss orders are not offered, and the Australian FAQ states so outright.
• Swap-free accounts are available at the broker’s discretion with an administration fee, and can be withdrawn at any time under PDS 13.5.

What Focus Markets does not publish

Focus Markets does not publish a per-pair spread table; it publishes one headline figure per account and stops there. That headline, 0.0 pips, is the Raw account floor and the broker’s own advertised figure.

At the top of this review the 0.08 pips is our measured EUR/USD spread on the live Raw account from the 22 to 24 September 2026 capture. The 0.0 pips is the broker’s advertised Raw floor, not the EUR/USD spread you should expect.

• A EUR/USD-specific spread, as distinct from the account-level floors it does quote
• A spread for AUD/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY or EUR/GBP
• Any statement of which currency the 3.50 commission is billed in
• A round-turn commission figure
• A swap rate schedule; the Australian FAQ says rates are calculated automatically in the trading platform, so they are visible only after an account exists
• The size of the conversion fee that PDS clause 13.10 reserves the right to charge

Focus Markets publishes no per-pair spread, and it was not part of the May to June 2026 capture Noam runs for the other pages on this site. Our September 2026 capture, 48 hours from 2pm AEST on 22 September to 2pm AEST on 24 September 2026 on a London VPS, measured the live Raw account at 0.08 pips on EUR/USD and 0.47 pips across eight pairs, and a live 0.01-lot trade on 21 September 2026 was charged commission at A$3.50 per side per standard lot. Other costs quoted in this review are the broker’s published figures on the date given rather than recorded ones, which means you are looking at a disclosure, not an observation. The guide to how Australian brokers price their accounts sets out what the disclosed end of the field looks like.

The commission currency is the single most consequential gap, and the part I keep coming back to is how little it is treated. A 3.50 per side rate in Australian dollars and the same rate in US dollars differ by roughly half again at the July 2026 exchange rate, and nothing on the Australian site resolves which applies before you choose a base currency.

What Focus Markets costs per trade

MEASURED

Standard lots per month

15102550

Monthly spread cost converts pips to dollars using the EUR/USD pip value as the proxy for the 8-pair average, footnoted on-page. AUD pip value A$14.25 per standard lot at AUD/USD 0.7019 (23 Oct 2026).

Rawraw + commission · 8-pair average · September 2026

A$136.97

At 10 standard lots per month on Raw accounts, Focus Markets costs approximately A$136.97 in spread and commission costs. Rates as of Fri 23 Oct 2026, 5pm New York close.

How Focus Markets compares to Trading.com

Focus Markets compares to Trading.com, 47 against 48. In our 22 to 24 September 2026 capture, Focus Markets’ Raw account measured 0.08 pips plus commission on EUR/USD, and Trading.com’s Trading Account measured 1.25 pips.

The choice is range versus certainty before you open either.

Trading.com and Focus Markets are both ASIC offerings on MetaTrader 5 at different price points. Focus Markets’ Raw account pairs 0.08 pips on EUR/USD with a 3.50 per side commission, while Trading.com’s Trading Account carries 1.25 pips with no commission, both from our 22 to 24 September 2026 capture, so what you pay per trade depends on which account you pick.

Trading.com’s Australian account page shows a tile reading Low Average Spreads 0.8 with no pair or unit (read 1 October 2026) and publishes no EUR/USD figure; our 22 to 24 September 2026 capture measured its EUR/USD at 1.25 pips and our 5 to 9 October 2026 capture at 1.02 pips, and it supplies its own WebTrader and app. This comparison is a historical record rather than a current recommendation. A broker email supplied by Noam Korbl on 1 October 2026 states Focus Markets ceases operations on 30 October 2026, so we no longer recommend opening a new Focus account.

Focus Markets account types and minimum deposit

Focus Markets account types number two for retail clients with a minimum deposit of A$100 on an Australian dollar account, and either account opens from that same entry point with no hidden higher tier for AUD.

The Australian FAQ confirms no product split between them: both accounts provide access to the full range of markets and platforms, so your account choice does not lock you out of an instrument. Share CFD leverage is capped at 5:1 on both, an ASIC product rule binding every licensed broker equally.

The two accounts differ on pricing shape alone, so you pick Standard for one number to watch or Raw for a tighter spread plus a commission line. Neither tier gates an instrument, a platform build or a funding method, which is the simplification worth having in a two-account setup.

Focus Markets minimum deposit

The minimum deposit is 100 units of the account base currency on both accounts. Australian dollars is among the base currencies offered, so an AUD account can be funded with A$100. Focus Markets publishes two slightly different base-currency lists on different Australian pages, so the full set is not reproduced here, and Australian dollars appears on both. I would want a single list rather than two, but the AUD entry is not the disputed part.

Focus Markets wholesale accounts and what is unverifiable

Focus Markets keeps wholesale terms off the Australian site: the June 2025 PDS sends wholesale enquiries to a representative, and David Levy’s 26 July 2026 read found no published leverage figure, eligibility test or issuing entity.

That leaves the terms unverifiable before signing, not merely undocumented. I would want the leverage, the eligibility test and the issuing entity in writing.

Two account questions are worth getting in writing from the broker, not from a sales chat, before signing anything: which entity issues the account, and at what leverage. The entity question matters most, because a wholesale account issued by an offshore group company carries none of the client money rules, the negative balance protection or the AFCA route that AFSL 514425 carries.

The disclosed leverage alternatives are set out in the guide to brokers with wholesale leverage tiers, where the terms are published before applying rather than after one. That is the comparison I would use before speaking to Focus Markets wholesale.

Focus Markets funding methods and withdrawal times

Focus Markets funds across five methods, all free of broker-side fees.

Deposit methods (AU)

BPAY and Australian dollar bank transfer are the useful pair for you as an Australian trader, and neither carries a broker-side fee. The funding menu omits PayID and Osko, both of which the faster-funding brokers in this market support, so your deposit may clear slower than it should.

Focus Markets withdrawal times and fees

Because no withdrawal has yet been made from our live Focus Markets account, you will not find a withdrawal time in this review.

The withdrawal menu inside the account is shorter than the deposit menu. Checked on 6 August 2026 it listed Skrill, Neteller, Mastercard, Visa and bank transfer, and no BPAY. A BPAY deposit therefore cannot be returned by the route it arrived on, which is the one funding detail on this broker that I would want seen before depositing.

Focus Markets account opening time and checks

Focus Markets’ live application runs eight steps inside the portal, and Noam Korbl measured the document review at 20 hours and 5 minutes from submission to approval. You choose between Standard and Raw during the application, where you set your currency and details too; MetaTrader 5 is the only platform.

There is no automated ID scan or biometric selfie; you upload a proof of identity plus a bank statement or utility bill, and a person reviews them. Brokers using instant checks can approve an account in minutes, so 20 hours is slower and more manual than the fastest end of the field. I would still call it reasonable for an AU broker that handles every document directly.

Noam deposited A$200 by card within the portal. Screen confirmation showed success and the balance was immediately available with no internal transfer step. The MT5 statement, dated 2 September 2026, records a single A$200 balance deal, zero commission and zero trades that day, before the first trade on 21 September 2026.

Focus Markets trading platforms

Focus Markets trading platforms number one: MetaTrader 5, across desktop, web and mobile, with no proprietary terminal and no second option.

MetaTrader 5

MetaTrader 5 is the whole platform story, so the trading setup runs entirely through MetaQuotes rather than a broker built tool, which means you are not stuck learning a proprietary platform. In my view, that is the right call for a broker that adds nothing of its own. Australian clients get the Windows build, white-labelled as focusmarkets5setup.exe, the generic MetaQuotes packages for Mac, iOS and Android, and a browser terminal at livetrader.focusmarkets.com.

Expert advisors and one-click trading work on both accounts, so automation and fast entry tools are not paywalled, meaning you get the full toolkit without a higher tier. Minimum trade size is 0.01 lots and maximum is 100, with no cap on open positions or pending orders. The platform decision is defensible for a broker with nothing of its own to add, because MT5 is mature and, in my view, it is what most systematic traders already run.

Focus Markets on the MetaTrader 5 app

Focus Markets publishes no app of its own. iTunes Search checks of the Australian App Store on 5 August 2026 and 1 October 2026 found no Focus Markets listing, so phone trading runs on the MetaTrader 5 app.

The store listing is MetaQuotes Software Corp.’s generic MetaTrader 5 build rather than a Focus Markets release, and you sign in with your Focus Markets account details. MetaTrader 5 is the broker’s only platform, so the phone carries the full setup. Brokers that publish their own software are compared in best trading apps in Australia.

Features Focus Markets does not offer

One documented platform inconsistency remains, and it is the kind of detail only caught by reading the legal page. The platform list on the legal page still includes cTrader, and no cTrader page, download or account option exists anywhere else in the Australian section, so that reads as stale drafting. The cTrader comparison for readers who need it sits in cTrader brokers in Australia.

Focus Markets leverage and margin under ASIC rules

Focus Markets leverage publishes at 30:1 on forex, 20:1 on indices and commodities, 5:1 on shares and 2:1 on crypto, every rate the ASIC retail cap, so no leverage exceeds the legal line.

• Given up with professional status: negative balance protection, the retail leverage limits, the 50% margin close-out
• Source: ASIC product intervention order (retail); Focus Markets and its Australian support, read 30 September 2026 (professional)

Those caps come from a product intervention order extended to 23 May 2027, so they bind every ASIC-licensed broker rather than this one alone. No figure on the Australian site departs from them, which saves you from having to check whether a quoted leverage is offside.

Every CFD issuer must close a retail client’s positions once account equity falls below half the total initial margin on all open positions, and positions cannot be netted against each other to avoid it. For your open positions, the margin call on this broker fires earlier, at 80%, with liquidation at or below 50%.

The wholesale leverage route is the one place where a different figure might apply, and it is unpublished, as the section above sets out. If you are weighing that route, you need the figure before the application, not after. The margin mechanics are explained in leverage in Australian forex trading.

Focus Markets execution and order handling

Focus Markets publishes its order rules and none of its outcomes, which leaves no way to check in advance how orders perform. Its order handling includes an 80% margin call and 50% liquidation levels.

The order-handling mechanics, those levels, and the position on guaranteed stops are set out in the sections above and below. What no document covers is how the execution actually performs, and the rules do not tell that.

It publishes no execution statistics of any kind: no average execution speed, no fill rate, no rejection rate, no slippage disclosure and no execution-quality report. We looked for each of those five across all thirteen of its Australian pages and in its June 2025 Product Disclosure Statement, Financial Services Guide and Client Agreement on 26 July 2026, and found none of them, so order expectations rest on trust rather than data, which means you cannot verify execution quality.

The gap sits in the broker’s disclosure rather than in our research, and an absence of measurement is not evidence of poor execution. In my view, it should not be treated as one either. Execution speed is not a category we measure, and the methodology behind our desk-assessed Trading Experience rating is set out in full.

Focus Markets markets and instrument counts

Focus Markets markets and instrument counts run to three published ranges: 800 plus instruments in total, 140 plus crypto assets and 500 plus global stock CFDs, across five asset classes, a broad headline count.

No per-class instrument figure is published, so this review does not print one. The tradeable instruments are defined exhaustively by the July 2025 Target Market Determination, which is the document you should check before assuming a specific market is available:

Two classes are absent, confirmed rather than assumed. ETFs and treasury or bond CFDs appear nowhere in the Target Market Determination, the PDS, or any of the thirteen Australian pages, so you cannot add them through this broker. The fixed income markets are covered in the guide to treasury and bond CFDs, which sets out the brokers that issue them.

Focus Markets share CFDs

The share CFD range spans Australian and international names, and precision matters on what you are buying: these are share CFDs, not shares. The licence carries derivatives and foreign exchange authorisations only, so the underlying stock cannot be sold to you here at all.

Crypto, indices and commodities

Crypto is the standout number. A 140 plus list runs wide for an ASIC-licensed broker, where 2:1 retail leverage and conservative listing usually keep the count low, and the guide to crypto CFDs in Australia shows you where that sits against the field. The index and commodity range is conventional, the commodity set including precious metals, and the class comparison sits in the coverage of commodity CFDs.

Focus Markets customer support

Focus Markets customer support runs 24 hours a day, five days a week across phone, email and live chat.

The Australian contact number is (03) 8376 1322.

No response time figure has been measured on this broker, so none appears here, and you are left without a public timing commitment. Focus Markets publishes no supported-language list either. The local phone line is the stronger signal.

The service stack closes across the weekend. If you hold a leveraged position across the Sunday open, you wait until Monday for a phone answer. Weekend support is the missing hedge in that scenario.

Focus Markets research, tools and education

Focus Markets supplies zero components of research, tools and education across all thirteen pages of the Australian section.

That is the largest single gap between this broker and the rest of the field, leaving traders entirely to their own learning curve with no broker supplied material to lean on; I would want at least a blog or a guide.

No blog, market analysis, webinar, written guide, video or in-platform training exists, so you cannot use the broker’s own material to build context around a trade. The only research-adjacent tool is the MetaTrader 5 built-in economic calendar, and that is a MetaQuotes feature rather than anything the broker supplies.

Plenty of brokers run a thin research stack, and Focus Markets carries none at all. The education subscore on this page reflects that directly rather than grading on a curve, so you should read that score as a deliberate penalty, not a rounding error.

The practical research consequence falls on newer traders. If you already know your way around MT5 and want an ASIC counterparty, you lose nothing here, and if you are still learning position sizing or risk you get no help at all and should start at a broker with a library. The licence context those guides would cover is set out in the ASIC-regulated field.

Should you open a Focus Markets account?

No. In my view you should not open a Focus Markets account, because Focus Markets says every trading account ends on 30 October 2026, and I see no life for a new account beyond that date. As an existing client, you need to act before your account is terminated, and here is what Focus Markets asks you to do.

• Close any open positions you hold before 30 October 2026, because Focus Markets will close any position you leave open after that date.
• Withdraw all your remaining funds before 30 October 2026, so you keep control of your money.
• Email customerservice@focusmarkets.com if you need help with your withdrawal.
• Plan around the fact that your trading account ends by the end of the trading day on 30 October 2026.