Beware! GMBanc is an offshore broker! Your investment may be at risk.
RECOMMENDED FOREX BROKERS
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Open trading accounts with at least two brokers.
GMBanc is a forex broker trading in forex, commodities, indices and stocks. If you open the company’s website, everything looks presentable and as it should be. However, if you try to Google the CEO’s name, nothing appears, as if this person doesn’t exist and it is also misspelled in the different sections of the website.
GMBanc Regulation and safety of funds
From the company’s website, we understand that the address of GMBanc is in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) which is an offshore zone. The Financial Services Authority in SVG has issued an official warning that they do not regulate forex brokers. The implications here are that GNBanc is a non-regulated forex broker and possibly scam. We do not advise potential clients to choose trading via non-regulated brokers as it contains risks for the safety of their funds. For example, if the broker is non-regulated and declares bankruptcy, then the traders’ funds will be lost, or, if it’s scam and they shut down the website, then again, clients’ funds will be lost.
Instead, we advise you to choose a forex broker from one of the well-established jurisdictions around the world. In those jurisdictions, legitimate and regulated brokers must meet some very strict requirements in order to be regulated by the financial authorities. For example, in EU, forex brokers must have an initial capital of no less than 73,000 EUR and they must contribute to a compensation scheme. In case of bankruptcy, the traders will be compensated up to 20,000 EUR per person if they are regulated by CySEC. In UK, legitimate brokers must also have an initial capital of 730,000 EUR and contribute to a compensation fund which will compensate the traders with up to 85,000 GBP per trader in case of bankruptcy if the broker is regulated by FCA. In addition to that, forex brokers must report on a daily basis about their transactions in order to provide transparency and avoid shady deals.
As you can see, there are a lot of measures undertaken by the financial authorities who regulate forex brokers to avoid scammers sneaking in their midst. Again, our advice to you is to look for legitimate and regulated forex brokers from well-established jurisdictions from around the world that can provide you with guarantee for the safety of your funds.
GMBanc Trading platform
To its clients, GMBanc offers MetaTrader 4 and web trader trading platforms. Below, you can see what MT4 has to offer as a trading software. On the left, you can see the currency pairs with their bid/ask price and beneath, the navigator for the indicators, expert advisors and scripts. In the middle of the screen, you see displayed charts with the fluctuation in price of the currency pairs. Here you see 4 charts of currency pairs in candlestick design but actually the number of charts and their design can vary depending on the trader’s needs.
If you look at the first chart in the screenshot that displays EUR/USD fluctuation and look at the bid/ask price, you can figure out that the spread for this currency pair is 2 pips which is not too high.
The leverage, as shown on the account information, is not high and varies from 1:25 to 1;50 depending on the account type. We must say that this leverage is in conformity with what legitimate forex companies in EU and US have as leverage cap. In EU, forex brokers are prohibited from offering a leverage higher than 1:30 and is the US, the leverage cap is 1:50. These are measures to lower the risks traders take with their transactions when choosing a high leverage.
We must say that GMBanc have made an excellent choice of a trading platform. MetaTrader 4 is considered one of the best trading platforms in forex and is the preferred choice of about 80% of the forex brokers. Although about 15 years old, this platform still offers a lot of advantages to its clients – an app market, auto trading option, a financial calendar and trading signals (for a subscription fee), VPS, code base with customs scripts, etc. However, good as it may be, this platform still cannot compensate for the fact that the forex broker is non-regulated and possibly scam.
GMBanc Deposit/Withdrawal methods and fees
As you can see from the screenshot below, GMBanc offers 3 different accounts – Basic, Standard and Advanced. The minimum initial deposit is $400 which rather high compared to other brokers who usually ask for $200-250. When you open an account with this broker and want to deposit funds, you find out that the only payment option is cryptocurrency. This is very limiting the choice of the client and may have possible implications for the trader’s safety of funds as you can find out if you read the last section of this review.
In the deposit/withdrawal section of the company’s website, we find out that withdrawal processing time may take 2 to 5 business days. There is no mention what the minimum withdrawal amount is.
Another stipulation says that if the trader’s account remains inactive for 3 months, then a 10% monthly fee will be taken from it. You should be aware that imposing percentage as a fee rather than a fixed amount is not to client’s advantage. For your information, regulated brokers wouldn’t ask for more than $20/month in fees for a dormant account.
GMBanc also offers bonuses or non-deposited funds to its clients. Bonuses and non-deposited funds are money that belong to the broker but are given to the trader to perform transactions. Although it may seem like something good, in fact bonuses and non-deposited funds come with heavy requirements attached to them. Client is not free to withdraw from the bonus and as per the policy of this company, must execute trade of a minimum trading volume of 30 times the deposit amount plus the bonus issued before he/she is allowed to draw the bonus or the profit. Imagine what mess that will create for your withdrawal options once the bonus amount is mixed with your funds! And, trading 30 times the deposit amount plus the bonus will be a Herculean effort. You are gonna need all the good luck in the world!
How does scam work?
Scam works in different ways. It could be either that you receive an unsolicited telephone call or you see one of these flashy ads on the Internet or the social media promising you a quick and easy profit. Scammers will promise you the sky and the earth until you give way to temptation and deposit money. Once you give them money you get caught in the scammers’ mouse trap and the cheese in the shape of a big fat money fall is gone! It may take some time before you realise that you are being scammed. Scammers are smooth talkers and they are masters of deception. They will give you some excuses as to why the big profit hasn’t come yet and will try to lure you to make even a bigger investment because according to them, the more you invest, the more you profit. After you have been waiting for awhile and you finally come to your senses, you realise that you are being scammed. All you want now is to get your money back and get out of there. However, the scammers won’t make it easy for you! They will try to delay you so that you miss the deadline for applying for chargeback.
What to do if scammed?
There are a few things that you must do immediately – file for chargeback if you have paid using a VISA or MasterCard. Those two payment providers allow you 540 days time frame within which you may file for chargeback.
However, the chances are grim if you have used bank transfer or Bitcoin as a payment method. There is no chance you’ll be able to recover your money.
In such desperate situation, some so-called ‘recovery agents’ may approach you with offers to recover your money for a fee. Be cautious as you may be dealing with another type of scammers. Always check the information about the recovery agency – make sure it is legitimate and transparent in the public eye. Also, some scammers publish personal comments after our review about how they have been scammed and how they found a recovery agent who helped them get their money back. Do not trust such comments and do not use the published contact info in them as it will lead you to another scammer!
And lastly, a reminder to cancel your credit card if you have given your CVV code to the scammers and erase any software from you PC that gives scammer access to your personal data.
