Credit Financier Invest (CFI) has one type of live trading account plus a free demo account with virtual $50 000 for testing purposes.
The CFI tradable portfolio is pretty extensive. It includes forex, CFDs, gold, oil as well as bonds, options, stocks and futures.
Most good brokers offer a wide selection of instruments to their clients. FxPro, for example, has over 70 forex pairs plus other products, while IG gives access to trading on thousands of markets. HYCM, Grand Capital and EasyMarkets give access to over 300 markets.
The Company. Security of Funds
Company Country Regulation
Credit Financier Invest sal Lebanon Banque du Liban (BDL)
Credit Financier Invest sal is registered in Lebanon and, in addition to the trading services offers investment advising, asset management and private banking. The company is regulated by the Central Bank of Lebanon (Banque Du Liban).
As per the local legislation, the BDL is the regulatory authority in Lebanon that controls and regulates financial firms in the country, but there is also the Capital Markets Authority (CMA). Either way, all financial firms and brokers – both local and international – are required to be approved and registered with the BDL. There are also fairly high capital requirements for the brokers and tight regulation.
Trading conditions
Minimum initial deposit
CFI has a rather high initial deposit of $5000, which suggests is is not aiming at small retail clients, but rather at the high rollers. In comparison, major brokers that are geared for retail clients like IG and FXTM have a deposit requirement of $1 and $5, respectively.
Spreads and commissions
The average spreads of CFI are also fairly high for the industry and reach an average of 3.5 pips, which is a lot. FXCM, for example, has an average spread of 1.4 pips, while IG offers even lower: 0.8 pips for their standard account.
Leverage
The maximum leverage offered by CFI is 1:200, which is around the average for the industry, even though there are brokers like Grand Capital which offers 1:2000 on some types of accounts. On the other hand, there are brokers like Circle Markets, which give 1:100 on their standard account.
Trading platform
For trading in forex CFI offers the familiar MetaTrader 4 (MT4), which it calls CFI-Trader. There is also a CFI-Multi Terminal, which is devised for managing and trading on multiple MT4 forex accounts.
Other major brokers offering MT4 are FXCM, XM and IG.
The broker has its own mobile trading application for forex – CFI-Mobile, which is available for iOS, Android and Windows devices.
CFI provides trading platforms for other assets: CFI-Global stocks, options and bonds. According to the company, this is their market maker’s own platform Trader Workstation. This suggest their market maker is Interactive Brokers, as this is its proprietary multiasset platform.
There are also the CQG Trader for traders who do not require technical analysis tools and the professional trading platform J-Trader.
Methods of payment
CFI provides several methods of payment for its clients. There is the wire transfer, both local and international and the a local transfer through OMT – the partner of Western Union in Lebanon. For the clients of several local banks CFI also offers the possibility to fund their accounts through mobile payment and bill aggregation platform in Lebanon Pinpay.
CFI is one of the handful of Lebanese forex brokers. Like its other peers, it is properly regulated by the local financial oversight authorities and appears to be stable and reliable.
Unlike another Lebanese forex broker that we reviewed recently – Trust Capital – CFI appears to be more geared for institutional traders and not retail investors. It has a big portfolio and obviously has a partnership with Interactive Brokers, which gives its clients access to a wide selection of tradable assets.