Capital.com wins a Singapore licence: former IG Asia chief Tony Lim to lead its first Southeast Asian entity, with clients from early 2027

Has Capital.com got a licence in Singapore? Yes. The online trading platform has secured a Capital Markets Services licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, its first regulated entry into Southeast Asia, Fintech News Singapore reported on 4 November. The licensed company is Capital Com Securities (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., and it is cleared to deal in capital markets products including securities and over-the-counter derivatives.

Clients will have to wait. Capital.com plans to begin onboarding Singapore clients in early 2027, and it has hired a well known local name to build the business: Tony Lim, the former chief executive of IG Asia, has been appointed CEO and executive director of the Singapore entity. For a city where online brokers compete hard for a small, wealthy and heavily protected retail market, the hire matters as much as the licence.

What the licence allows

A Capital Markets Services licence is the gateway to Singapore's securities and derivatives business. MAS says a company "must hold a capital markets services (CMS) licence" to conduct activities regulated under the Securities and Futures Act 2001, from dealing in capital markets products to fund management and custody. For a broker, the relevant activity is dealing, which covers products such as OTC derivatives and spot foreign exchange for leveraged trading.

Capital.com's licence covers dealing in capital markets products, including securities and OTC derivatives, according to the Fintech News Singapore report. That is the scope a contract for difference provider needs. MAS's own pages add one condition that shapes the product: a broker-dealer that offers contracts for differences or leveraged foreign exchange "is required to collect margins from the investors", and it must keep customers' money and assets segregated, provide account statements and give best execution.

The licence does not settle what Capital.com will sell on day one. The report describes the scope but does not set out which instruments, client categories or leverage terms the Singapore entity will offer at launch, and the firm has not published a Singapore product list. Those details will matter more to traders than the licence headline, and they are likely to follow MAS's conduct and suitability rules for retail clients.

Getting this far is itself a process. MAS says applications go in online through Form 1 with a non-refundable application fee of S$1,000, and that it expects to take up to six months to review a complete application. An in-principle approval then gives the applicant up to six months to meet the remaining licensing requirements, extendable by three months, and a dealing licensee pays an annual fee that MAS puts at between S$2,000 and S$8,000. Capital.com has now cleared that path, with launch preparation still ahead.

Why Tony Lim is the real story

Capital.com has chosen a Singapore insider. Lim previously ran IG Asia, one of Capital.com's most direct competitors, and has more than 30 years in Singapore's capital markets, with roles at SIMEX, Singapore Exchange, DBS Vickers and Saxo Capital Markets, according to the report. Few executives know the local CFD and brokerage market from as many sides.

His first message is caution, not speed. "Our focus over the coming months is on getting the foundations right," Lim said. That fits the way MAS licenses brokers. The regulator requires a CMS licensee's CEO to be resident in Singapore with at least 10 years of relevant experience, and it expects at least two full time Singapore based representatives for each regulated activity. A seasoned local chief makes those tests, and the relationship with the regulator after licensing, much easier. It also gives the firm a leader who already knows what Singapore's retail traders expect from a platform, from pricing to service, before the first account is opened.

Capital.com is also building on the ground rather than serving Singapore from abroad. The entity has an office at 9 Battery Road in Raffles Place with local compliance, operations, client services and marketing teams. Valentina Rzheutskaya, executive director of Capital.com, framed the licence as a standard rather than a badge: "Holding a license here means operating to that standard locally."

Holding a license here means operating to that standard locally.

How onboarding will work

Capital.com has already set out the onboarding steps. Clients will verify their identity through Singpass MyInfo, Singapore's national digital identity service, and must complete full verification before they can trade. Two factor authentication will be mandatory at sign in. After onboarding, the firm plans to offer market analysis, educational resources, charting tools and risk management features such as stop loss orders, with in-app explanations of financial instruments and their risks.

The emphasis on verification matters. A licensed broker's first job in the market is to prove that the account a client opens, and the app they download, really belongs to the regulated entity. Traders can check that themselves in MAS's Financial Institutions Directory, the register of licensed firms, as explained in our guide to checking a broker's licence in Southeast Asia. The entity name to look for is Capital Com Securities (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. Before opening an account in 2027, a Singapore trader should run through a short checklist:

• Search the exact entity name in MAS's Financial Institutions Directory and confirm it holds a Capital Markets Services licence
• Make sure the app or website used belongs to the Singapore entity, not the firm's international site
• Check MAS's Investor Alert List for look-alike names and unauthorised websites
• Read the risk disclosures for CFDs and leveraged products before funding the account
• Confirm that client money will be held in segregated accounts, as MAS requires of broker-dealers

Until onboarding opens, Singapore residents cannot trade with the new local entity. The firm's international website is run by Capital Com Online Investments Ltd, which it describes as authorised by the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, a different regulator with different protections. Its own risk warning on that site states that 80.96 percent of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with that provider. A Singapore client will be best protected by waiting for, and using, the MAS licensed entity.

What it means for Singapore's broker market

Singapore is a crowded and expensive market to enter. The CMS licence brings minimum capital that MAS says ranges from S$50,000 to S$5 million for broker-dealers depending on products and clients, a requirement to hold financial resources above total risk requirements, and a review that MAS expects to take up to six months for a complete application. SpinDepth counted 129 firms with an active CMS licence in April, as covered in our report on Singapore's MAS licensed brokers.

The newcomer joins established online brokers in that pool, including Lim's former employer. Its pitch will have to rest on product, pricing and trust rather than novelty. A Singapore licence also has value beyond Singapore: brokers use MAS supervision as a credibility signal across Asia, even though, as MAS and every regulator in the region stress, a licence only protects clients in the jurisdiction that issued it.

For the wider region, the move is a marker. Capital.com was founded in 2016 and says it holds licences in the UK, the EU, the Middle East, Africa and Australia. Choosing Singapore as its first regulated Southeast Asian market puts the firm under one of the region's most demanding regulators before it decides whether, and how, to approach the region's larger but more fragmented retail markets.

Capital.com's Singapore licence is a slow start by design: a local entity, a local chief, a 2027 launch and an onboarding process built around verification. In a market where retail traders have plenty of licensed choice and regulators watch conduct closely, that may be the only kind of start that works. The test comes in 2027, when the firm has to show Singapore clients a product and a price that justify switching.