Four Regulators in HFM's Footer, and the Square of the Map They Don't Cover
The Philippine SEC's advisory against HFM sets four published licence numbers beside one jurisdiction that recognises none of them. A dated status check, not breaking news.
HF Markets carries one of the fuller licence footers in the offshore FX business. Four entities, four regulators, four numbers — and the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Philippines, in an advisory reported on 8 January 2026, said the platform holds registration in other jurisdictions but not in the Philippines.
We are reporting that advisory in September 2026 and will not dress it up as news: it is a dated status check on a document published eight months ago. The SEC’s own advisories page returned a 403 to our automated request, so we could not re-read the notice at source. What follows is the advisory as reported by BitPinas on 8 January 2026.
What the SEC actually said
The advisory names HFM/HF MARKET — website and mobile app both — and states the platform is not authorised to solicit investments from the public. Per that report, the regulator found that HFM’s operations allow Filipinos to open accounts for the purpose of investing and trading unregistered investment products, and that the platform had run promotional campaigns aimed at prospective Filipino investors. Exness Global Limited was named in the same advisory; that is a separate matter.
The reasoning is the part worth pinning down. The SEC, per the report, recognised that the platforms hold registration in other jurisdictions but not in the Philippines. That is a narrow statement and it should be read narrowly. It is not a finding that HFM is unlicensed generally, and it says nothing about what the Philippines does or does not license.
The four numbers, and whose claims they are
As summarised in the same account, HFM’s published regulatory standing runs: HF Markets (UK) Ltd, FCA firm reference number 801701; HF Markets SA (PTY) Ltd, FSCA licence 46632 in South Africa; HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd, Seychelles FSA Securities Dealer licence SD015; and HFM Investments Ltd, licence 155 from Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority as a non-dealing online FX broker. Those are the company’s own claims as reproduced in the coverage. We have not run any against the FCA, FSCA, Seychelles FSA or Kenyan CMA registers, and until someone does they are footer text, not findings.
Even taken at face value, a licence is a legend for a particular map. An FCA reference covers the UK entity and the clients booked to it; a reader in Manila or Jakarta onboarded to a Seychelles entity is standing on different ground. We made the same argument about warning lists in our review of Malaysia’s alert lists: the document proves what it says and nothing adjacent.
One practical line to close on. Find out which entity your account sits under, and check it against the register of the country you actually live in — not the one with the best-looking number in the footer. Trading these products carries a real risk of losing your capital, and none of this is advice to open or avoid any account.