Beware! GrowPro Markets 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.
GrowPro Markets is as far from legitimate as a broker could be. This unlicensed enterprise has earned a warning from a respected EU financial institution and offers conditions that are hardly in line with what we would expect from a respected brokerage firm. Better skip this broke’s offer altogether if you do not want to take a huge investment risk.
GrowPro Markets REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
The contact information GrowPro Markets has provided was extremely vague – from their address, we could not tell where the broker was supposedly based or licensed. However, according to their Terms and Conditions, the broker follows the laws of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. This is ironic considering the fact that this country those not have any laws related to forex trading and that the local financial regulator, SVGFSA, does not monitor the activities of forex brokers. These factors make the county a favorite location for scam brokers.
Additionally, we would like to point out that the Spanish financial regulator, CNMV, has recently issued a warning on this broker stating that they are an unregulated, unauthorized entity.
All of these things considered, we do not believe that GrowPro Markets is a good investment choice.
Only invest with reliable, licensed companies – this is the only way to be sure you would not end up robbed. Brokers licensed in the UK, the EU, and Australia are all good choices since the financial authorities of all these countries and regions are fairly strict and make sure that brokers conduct business in a fair and transparent manner. Clients of such brokers are also entitled to many protections. In order to obtain a license, a broker must prove its financial stability by maintaining a certain minimum capital – €730 000 in the UK and the EU, and A$1 million in Australia. Brokers must keep client funds in segregated bank accounts in order to prove no mixing of funds can happen. This not only keeps your money protected in case the broker becomes insolvent but also proves that they would not be able to use your investments for their own business operations – knowingly or unknowingly. Negative balance protection is a must – the losses you suffer cannot exceed the amount of money you have in your trading account.
GrowPro Markets TRADING SOFTWARE
GrowPro Markets promised access to the famous platform MetaTrader 4 – however, that platform could not be downloaded or accessed through the broker’s website or client area. Instead, we were invited to trade on the web-based software you can see below:
It might be tempting to start trading on such a platform since they are quite easy to use while still offering a decent level of functionality. However, such simple software offers barely any more advanced tools and features which makes it quite boring and less-than-ideal as a gateway to the world of trading.
Our advice would be to turn to a reliable broker who can actually offer MT4 – there are plenty of such brokers out there as the platform remains one of the most popular in the world of trading. This popularity can easily be explained – MT4 is user-friendly and accessible but also offers a huge array of trading tools and features. Not only would you be able to get access to countless indicators, timeframes, and chart types but you could also employ features like Expert Advisors, a Strategy Tester, and VPSs, set signals or purchase various additional trading apps from a digital market. Without a doubt, this is one of the best platforms you could trade on – check it out yourself in a demo or a real account.
GrowPro Markets TRADING CONDITIONS
GrowPro Markets offers a few different account types, the most basic one costing $250. This is actually more of an upper limit for most brokers these days – most companies would accept a much smaller initial deposit. Some of the most established brokers in the industry offer Micro accounts for as little as $1.
The spread the broker offered was around 1.7 pips on EURUSD – which is not bad but is still above the number we consider to be the industry average (1.5 pips). There is also a commission of 1% on all executed trades which could potentially make trading with GrowPro Markets quite pricy.
We were urged to choose between leverage of 1:200 and 1:300 when opening an account. Lower rates were not offered. This is worrisome since trading with such high leverage could lead to enormous losses, especially for inexperienced new clients. That is why many countries have also imposed leverage restrictions – brokers in the UK, the EU, and Australia, for example, are not allowed to offer leverage higher than 1:30 to their retail clients. Always be cautions and take factors like market volatility, and your own knowledge and experience into consideration when choosing to trade with your leverage.
GrowPro Markets DEPOSIT AND WITHDRAWAL METHODS AND FEES
GrowPro Markets only seems to accept bank wire transfer deposits – although they promised that we would also be able to deposit via credit or debit card. However, we were not able to get access to any sort of payment information before we contacted an account manager – so we cannot be sure that we would not be urged to use another payment method. Bare in mind that wire transfers are generally irreversible – such reversals usually happen to prevent a technical mistake on the bank’s side. If you have already deposited with the broker and the payment has passed through, your chances of retrieving your money are slim.
The broker states that it itself does not charge deposit and withdrawal fees – but it charges all other sorts of fees. There is a fairly standard inactivity fee of $30 after 60 days of no trading activity. There is also a quarterly fee of $75 for maintenance – which is actually quite pricy. You will also be charged a clearance fee of 1% for all executed trades. All these fees seem little but they add up to a less-than-lucrative experience.
Additionally, GrowPro Markets offers bonuses – that are actually banned in the UK, the EU, and Australia for a good reason. Scam brokers often use bonuses as a way of adding of making you agree to all sorts of crazy conditions – such as the following clause:
You would not be able to withdraw anything from your account – including your deposits and profits – before reaching a very high turnover – the bonus amount plus the deposit times 25. Scam brokers often tend to raise these thresholds without warning to prevent you from withdrawing your money for an even longer period of time. They are just trying to prevent you from withdrawing and are covering their tracks. While you are chasing thresholds that are hard to reach even for professional traders, the broker will be busy disappearing with your deposits.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK?
This type of scam is really not that complicated – but it has proven to be quite effective and has managed to trick quite a few people. Given such schemes’ growing popularity, it is important to know how to avoid them – so reading the following paragraphs carefully is vital.
The scam starts with you seeing an ad on the Internet for a certain broker’s website. Such websites usually promise amazing conditions and extremely fast profits – but offer very little in terms of license and company information. However, sometimes scammers can be very elaborate in their promise – so you fall for it and provide them with a phone number or an email. There is another option – they might have stumbled upon your contact details somewhere and are the first to make contact. After that, a game of cat and mouse begins – you will be asked to open an account and make a deposit. Keep in mind that these are professional scammers who convince people to transfer money for a living – they will sweet-talk you into depositing by talking about profits and opportunities.
After that, you might indeed see profits and deposit even more money – but all of this is smoke and mirrors, scammers often manipulate results to make you transfer bigger amounts.
At some point, of course, you would want to withdraw your money – and the problems will start. Additional fees or unfulfilled clauses in the Terms and Conditions will appear, and you will be denied access to your money. At this point, you will probably discover something is wrong – and this is when the scammers will drop out of sight.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED?
There are a few things you could do if you discover you have been scammed. Chargebacks are possible in some cases depending on the payment method you have used to deposit. Both Visa and MasterCard allow such chargebacks within 540 days while bank transfers and cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible.
Make sure to change all banking passwords. If you have installed any remote access software, remove it immediately – scammers ask their victims to install such software under different pretexts but their endgame is to just get access to your banking accounts and steal even more money.
Notify authorities and share your story with as many people as possible – the more people know about such scams, the less they will fall victim to fraudulent schemes.
Last but not least – don’t trust any so-called “recovery agents” that offer to retrieve your money for a fee – this is just another type of scam, sometimes even conducted by the same people that stole your money in the first place.
