A complaint is not a bad review. A review vents; a formal complaint starts legal clocks — deadlines the firm must meet, and an independent referee you can escalate to when it doesn't. Most people never find out the referee exists, or discover it after their deadline passed. This page is the route, step by step, with the timelines that actually apply.
Step 1 — complain to the broker, in writing, using the word "complaint"
Email support with "formal complaint" in the subject line. Include: your account ID, what happened (dates, amounts), what you've already tried, and what outcome you want. The magic is in the word — a "complaint" triggers regulatory handling duties that a chat message never does:
- UK-regulated firms must send a final response within 8 weeks (FCA rules) — and must tell you about the ombudsman if they can't resolve it.
- Cyprus (CySEC) firms must acknowledge within 5 business days and respond substantively within 2 months (3 at the outside).
- Australian firms owe a written response within 30 calendar days (ASIC's dispute-resolution standard).
Keep everything: timestamps, screenshots, chat transcripts, the platform's own records. The evidence pack you build now is what steps 2 and 3 run on.
Step 2 — the ombudsman, chosen by your legal entity
If the deadline passes or the answer doesn't fix it, escalate to the external referee — which one exists for you depends on which legal entity holds your account, not which brand is on the website:
- UK (FCA entities): the Financial Ombudsman Service — free, and you generally have six months from the firm's final response to refer. Awards are binding on the firm.
- Cyprus (CySEC entities): the Financial Ombudsman of the Republic of Cyprus — a €20 filing fee, and you must have complained to the firm first. Watch the windows: submit within 12 months of your complaint to the firm, and within 18 months of becoming aware of the problem.
- Australia (ASIC entities): AFCA — free for consumers, after the firm's 30-day internal process.
One brand can run four entities with four different answers. Check yours with the entity decoder before you assume protection exists — and read broker brand vs legal entity for why the entity in your agreement is the only name that matters.
What ombudsmen do — and don't — pay for
They rule on conduct failures: mishandled withdrawals, execution errors, unauthorised charges, misleading statements, botched account closures. They do not refund trading losses from your own decisions — "I lost money on a trade" is not a complaint; "my withdrawal has been obstructed for two months" is. Frame your case as conduct, with evidence, and skip the market commentary.
Step 3 — tell the regulator too (but know what it's for)
File a complaint with the entity's regulator as well. Be clear-eyed about what this does: regulators generally don't award you compensation — CySEC says so explicitly. What regulator complaints do is feed supervision: patterns of complaints are how warnings, inspections and enforcement start. You're not filing for yourself; you're filing for the record — and firms know regulators read those files.
The offshore reality
If your account sits with an offshore entity — Seychelles, Belize, Vanuatu, the Comoros and similar — there is usually no ombudsman at all. The escalation ladder ends at step 1, and the compensation schemes that back UK and EU accounts don't exist. That gap, not the spread, is the true price of the offshore discount: see tier-1 vs offshore regulation. One narrow separate route can exist regardless of entity: if you deposited by card and the service was genuinely not provided, your card issuer's dispute process is a civil mechanism with its own (short) time limits — a question for your bank, not the broker.
Before you're in this position
The cheapest complaint is the one you never file. Verify the entity and its licence before depositing, test a small withdrawal early, and treat an obstructed withdrawal as the red flag it is — our withdrawals explainer covers what's normal and what's a stall. If a broker has stalled you, report it to us as well: reports are internal signals that help us catch patterns early.
Deadlines and bodies above cover the UK, Cyprus and Australia as most commonly encountered; other jurisdictions differ, and rules change. Educational content, not financial or legal advice.