Beware! Excellence Invest 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.
Excellence Invest gives off the vibe of being an excellent partner to join in for a positive trading experience by claiming that it is a multi-award winning broker providing transparency and strong regulation. However, what awaits you is nothing but disappointment because this broker is out there to fleece you. Here are the facts.
Excellence Invest Regulation and safety of funds
First of all, as per the information available on this broker’s website, the address of the company is in the UK. Presumably, the company should be licensed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the official body that regulates forex brokers. So, we search the FCA register but, as you can see from the image below, there is no company registered under such a name. What happened to the claim about ‘strong regulation’? It appears that not only this broker is not registered and licensed but is most probably a scammer. We do not advise you to trade with Excellence Invest as your precious money will be at risk of going down the drain.
Luckily, UK brokers are strictly regulated and a simple search in the FCA register can tell you right away if the broker is to be trusted. You must know that UK brokers must jump through various hoops in order to get their license. First of all, they must invest an initial capital of no less than 730,000 EUR which is an excellent way to keep scammers out as they will never spend so much money for the benefit of looking legit. In addition to that, UK brokers must keep their clients’ funds segregated from their own with tier-1 bank establishments in order to guarantee their safety. Other measures to protect clients include negative balance protection, low leverage of forex currencies and other trading products, regular reporting on transactions for the sake of transparency, etc. One of the greatest advantages in trading with UK brokers, however, is that they participate and deduct funds towards the local Financial Services Compensation Scheme from which in case of bankruptcy clients can be repaid up to 85,000 GBP per client.
Excellence Invest Trading software
Excellence Invest trades in forex, CFDs and metals and the trading software at its clients’ disposal is the MetaTrader 4 trading platform. We must say that this is an excellent choice of trading software as MT4 still holds strong despite being launched 15 years ago. This is largely due to the amazing package of trading tools and instruments offered to the traders which contain an auto trading option, code base with customs scripts, an app market, trading signals, etc. A key feature for MT4 is the charting options that present a variety of charts, time frames, colours and even the option of creating customised templates. Also, we can’t omit to mention the array of technical analysis indicators that help traders predict the future direction of exchange rates and make a profit.
Below is an image of what MT4 looks like. Let’s take a closer look at the chart displayed in the top-left corner that shows the fluctuation in price in a given time frame for the EUR/USD currency pair. From the bid/ask price of the same pair, we find out that the spread is 0.2 pips which is very tight and means that the cost of transactions won’t be too high and traders will be able to achieve a sustainable profit. On the other hand, the leverage which is shown to be up to 1:1000 (last image) is incredibly high. It tells us two things. Firstly, that this is another proof that Excellence Invest is a scammer as no licensed broker in the UK would offer such leverage. According to the existing regulations for forex trade in the UK, forex brokers have a cap on leverage for forex currencies and it cannot exceed 1:30. Secondly, trading with this leverage for sure will put clients’ money at leverage as the scope of financial loss suffered in unsuccessful transactions will be amplified by it.
And here is another reason why you should not trade with Excellence Invest!
Excellence Invest Deposit/Withdrawal methods and fees
From the image below, you can see that Excellence Invest offers 3 trading accounts – Basic, Standard and ECN. The minimum initial deposit for the Basic account is 1,000 EUR which we consider to be high compared to what licensed brokers would normally ask for, i.e., as little as $1-5. For the Standard and ECN accounts the initial deposit is 5,000 EUR.
The payment methods shown on the company’s website include Skrill, Neteller, FasaPay, ePayments, Bitpay, Uphold, Mybitwallet.
There is no information on the website regarding the minimum withdrawal amount and any fees involved.
We must point out that there is no Terms and Conditions document and registering a trading account without knowing what the trading conditions are is another risk for your money you might be facing should you choose to trade with Excellence Invest.
How does scam work?
A lot of people get scammed in different scammers’ schemes not because they are naive but because scammers are masters of persuasion and manipulation. It all starts with unsolicited telephone calls or a flashy ad on the Internet or social media. Sometimes people give up to temptation and invest money in shady schemes made to look legit and attractive and always promising quick and easy money fall. Once you deposit money into any of these schemes, you reach a point of no return! Your money is gone down the scammers’ food chain and you’ll have a lot of trouble recovering it. Scammers will do anything in their power to delay you, so you miss the opportunity to file for a chargeback. They will ask you for this and that document and will find hundreds of reasons not to let you retrieve your money. The trick with offering bonuses in forex trading is one of those as your funds are mixed with the bonus money and it takes a lot of hassle to fulfil the broker’s requirements before you are able to withdraw any funds.
What to do if scammed?
Speed does it! You need to act very quickly if you want to recover your money. Immediately apply for a chargeback if you have made your deposit via credit card. Fortunately, VISA and MasterCard give you 540 days within which to apply for a chargeback.
If you have paid via wire transfer or Bitcoin, the chances of retrieving your fund are grim. Anyway, we want to warn you that some of the so-called recovery agents may approach you and offer to retrieve your funds. For a fee, of course! Be cautious when dealing with them as it may be another form of scam! Always check if the recovery agency is legitimate and visible to the public!
Another thing we advise you to do is to immediately cancel any credit cards if the scammers have your CVV code. Also, make sure to erase any programs on your computer that give scammers access to your personal data on your PC.
