What CIF Markets claims
CIF Markets (also written CIFMarkets) is a CFD brand at cifmarkets.com — a young one: domain records reported by third parties show the site registered in April 2025. Its operator is described as Aclive Wealth Advisory (Pty) Ltd, a South African company claiming FSCA authorisation under FSP 54857, and — per the terms reproduced in third-party coverage — clients are onboarded by the South African entity while the actual trading counterparty is an Intrepot entity registered in the Comoros under MISA. We say "reported" deliberately: the broker's own legal pages refused our automated reading, so its claims here are compiled from secondary coverage rather than read off the source.
Two names not to confuse it with: "CIF" in this brand is not a Cyprus Investment Firm — the CySEC-licensed entity type the abbreviation normally means; no register we checked shows any CySEC licence for this brand. And it is not "Cif Finance", a different operation that currently dominates some of the search results for this brand's own name.
The licence question we could not close
Two different registers matter here, and they told us two different things. The FSCA's OTC Derivative Providers search — the authorisation normally required to offer CFDs to South African clients — we queried first-hand on 25 August 2026: no results for Aclive Wealth Advisory, searched in full and in partial form. The FSP-number search (which would show the claimed FAIS licence 54857 and its categories) is a different tool — and as of late August 2026 it is offline entirely during the FSCA's system migration, so even a manual FSP lookup is temporarily impossible. So the FAIS claim — FSP 54857, held by Aclive Wealth Advisory — is, from where we sit, unverified in either direction. Third parties don't help: some review sites say they verified the licence; one well-known aggregator states no licence was found. We repeat neither. But here is why the ODP result above matters even if the FSP claim checks out: a standard FAIS Category I licence covers intermediary and advisory services — offering CFDs to South African clients normally requires the separate OTC derivative provider authorisation, and the register search for that authorisation returns nothing for this operator. A FAIS licence without ODP authorisation is the precise gap South Africa's regulator has acted on before with far larger firms.
Update, 9 September 2026: we also searched the FSCA's Enforcement Actions register first-hand for this operator. It returns no results for Aclive Wealth Advisory. That cuts in the operator's favour and we report it as readily as the rest: South Africa's regulator has published no enforcement action against them. It does not confirm the FAIS claim, and the FSP-number search is still offline, so the licence question stays exactly where it was. But "no authorisation we could find" and "a regulator has acted against them" are different statements, and only the first one is ours to make.
The Comoros counterparty — corrected 26 August
Correction, 26 August 2026: an earlier version of this page, published one day before, reported no Intrepot entry on this register. That reading came from the registrar's mirror sites — the canonical domain blocks automated reading — and the mirrors turned out to be stale. A direct browser read of the canonical register found the listing below; we corrected this section the same day. Corrections are always logged openly here.
The reported terms route the actual trading relationship to an Intrepot entity in the Comoros. The canonical Mwali register, read first-hand on 26 August 2026, lists "Intrepot Investment" — licence BFX2025155, status active, issued 30 December 2025 and expiring 30 December 2026, company number HV00126489, website intrepot.com. So the counterparty's licence exists and is current. What the same record shows is worth reading closely: the licence is barely months old, and one named individual, at an address in Ypsonas, Cyprus, is listed as both CEO and ultimate beneficial owner. A brand whose name evokes a "Cyprus Investment Firm", run from Cyprus — under a Comoros offshore licence rather than a CySEC one. A Mwali registration carries no EU-style compensation scheme or conduct supervision, and the Comoros' own central bank has reportedly stated MISA approvals carry no legal recognition within the Comoros for financial-institution activity. (For how this register can go wrong in the other direction, see our WorldCapital1 check, which found a Mwali licence number registered to a different company entirely.)
The UK "payment agent" — verified first-hand
Third-party coverage describes withdrawals as routed through a UK company, Aclive Advisory (UK) Ltd, charging a reported 3% + $0.25 fee. The company itself we could verify: Companies House shows it incorporated on 23 February 2026— about six months before this check — with a business classification of "other business support service activities", not a financial or payments code, and we found no FCA authorisation for it. A months-old, non-financially-classified company sitting in the withdrawal path is a structure to understand completely before any money crosses it — see brand vs legal entity for why the entity in the money path matters more than the brand on the website.
What we did not find
- No regulator warnings or actions: Spain's CNMV warned-entities search returns no match and the FSCA's own Enforcement Actions search returns no results for either the operator's name or the brand (both queried directly, 25 Aug 2026); searches of the FCA, CySEC, CONSOB, ASIC and IOSCO alert lists also found nothing. For a brand this young that reportedly excludes EU, UK and North American clients, absence of warnings is weak evidence either way — enforcement typically lags by years.
- No first-hand user experiences: the brand's Trustpilot profile is claimed but has zero reviews, and we found no forum threads. The positive "reviews" that rank in search are 2026 guest posts on non-finance and pay-to-play sites, uniformly favourable, none addressing the counterparty structure.
- No readable primary terms: the broker's own legal pages refused automated reading, so fees, exclusions and account terms circulating online are all second-hand.
Before depositing, get these answered
- Ask in writing which legal entity is your trading counterparty, and match the exact name against the registers yourself.
- Ask for the FSCA FSP number and verify it with the FSCA directly — including whether an OTC derivative provider authorisation exists, not just a FAIS licence. At the time of writing the FSCA's legacy FSP search host is offline during a system migration; its new search tool does offer an OTC Derivative Providers lookup, and the FSCA's contact centre can confirm an FSP number when the online search cannot.
- Ask why withdrawals route through a UK company with a non-financial classification, and what the full fee is.
- If you proceed anyway, start with the minimum and test a withdrawal before anything else.
No accusation is implied by anything above — this page documents what official sources show and what they don't, as of the dates stated. If you have first-hand experience with this broker, report it to us — reports are internal signals that help us catch patterns early.