"Pepperstone", "XM", "eToro" — those are brands. Your account is not with a brand. It sits with one specific company inside a corporate group, and that company's name is printed on your client agreement. Which company you get depends mostly on where you live — and it decides your compensation cover, your leverage limits, and which regulator you can complain to. Two traders using the same broker, the same platform and the same logo can hold accounts with entirely different legal entities operating under entirely different rules.
One brand, several companies
Most international brokers run a family of legal entities, each licensed in a different jurisdiction. Pepperstone is a clear example of the standard structure:
- Pepperstone Limited — authorised by the UK's FCA, onboards UK residents.
- Pepperstone EU Limited — authorised by CySEC in Cyprus, serves the EU/EEA.
- Pepperstone Group Limited — holds an ASIC licence for Australian clients.
- Pepperstone Markets Limited — registered in The Bahamas with the SCB, and typically the entity for clients in most of the rest of the world.
Same website, same platform, same brand. Four companies, four rulebooks. This is normal industry structure, and it is disclosed — usually in the website footer and always in the client agreement. The trap is not that it's hidden. The trap is that most people never read which entity is actually on their paperwork.
A worked example: same brand, two very different accounts
Take two traders who both open "a Pepperstone account".
A UK resident is onboarded by Pepperstone Limited, the FCA entity. If that firm ever failed, the FSCS covers eligible claims up to £85,000 (it never covers trading losses). Retail CFD leverage is capped at 30:1 under FCA/ESMA-style rules, and client money is held in segregated accounts under FCA CASS requirements.
A trader in a country not covered by the group's FCA, EU, Australian or Middle East entities is typically onboarded by Pepperstone Markets Limited in The Bahamas. There is no investor compensation scheme behind that entity, and the 30:1 retail leverage cap does not follow you offshore — higher leverage is generally available, which cuts both ways.
Neither account is improper, and the offshore entity is a disclosed part of the group. But if the firm behind your account failed, the first trader has a statutory scheme standing behind them and the second does not. The brand told you nothing about that difference; the legal entity told you everything.
The same pattern shows up across the industry. PU Prime onboards South African residents through PU Prime (Pty) Ltd, licensed by the FSCA, while most other regions default to PU Prime Limited in Seychelles (FSA Securities Dealer licence SD050), which carries no compensation scheme. You can see how we break this down entity-by-entity on the PU Prime scan page and the Pepperstone scan page.
How to find which entity you're with
You don't need to guess. The name is in at least four places:
- The client agreement. The legal entity is named in the opening paragraph of the terms you accept at signup. This is the definitive answer.
- The signup screen. Many brokers state the onboarding entity in small print near the registration form, or route you to a regional site that names it.
- The website footer for your region. Footers often list every group entity — the one that applies to you is usually determined by your country of residence, not by which version of the site you happen to be reading.
- Account statements and deposit receipts. The company name on those documents is the company you have the relationship with.
Once you have the exact legal name and licence number, confirm it on the regulator's own register — the process takes about five minutes and we walk through it in how to verify a broker licence.
Why brokers structure it this way
Licences are national. An FCA or ASIC authorisation does not cover the whole world, so to take clients from other regions a group either obtains a local licence or routes those clients through an entity in a jurisdiction that permits cross-border business. Offshore entities can also offer leverage far above the 30:1 retail caps that apply in the UK, EU and Australia — and some traders choose them for exactly that reason.
The point is not that one structure is right and another wrong. The point is that the trade-offs — compensation scheme or none, capped or uncapped leverage, a strict or light-touch regulator — are set by the entity, not the brand. Our regulation guide explains how the tiers differ.
Check before you deposit
Our entity check tool maps broker brands to their verified legal entities by country, using data checked against the regulators' own registers. Where a broker–country mapping isn't confirmed, it says "unknown" on purpose rather than guessing — in that case, confirm the entity during signup and look it up on the official register before sending money.
The question to answer before your first deposit is never "is this brand regulated somewhere?" It is: "which legal entity is my account with, and what rules apply to that company?"
This article is educational research, not financial or legal advice — always confirm your own entity and its licence on the official register before depositing.