Multi-asset investment specialist Saxo Bank has warned of changes that will affect OpenAPI apps.

Handling of pre-trade disclaimers will become mandatory for all OpenAPI apps from May 2025, so it’s important to start implementing proper support for them in OpenAPI Applications. Failure to do so will lead to orders being rejected when you have outstanding disclaimers, which can be added at any time.

Pre-trade disclaimers are disclaimers that have to be shown and accepted before an order can be placed. They are shown after the “Place order” button is clicked, and look similar to this:

Once accepted the order is placed by the platform.

Several overall types of pre-trade disclaimers exist:

• Blocking disclaimers – These disclaimers can be shown, but not accepted. Essentially they block the trade from being placed.
• Normal disclaimers – These can be accepted and usually won’t have to be accepted again, unless the content of the disclaimer changes.
• Recurring disclaimers – These can be accepted, but will have to be accepted before every order placed.

It can also vary what accepting a disclaimers means. In the screenshot above, it’s simply clicking the Accept button, but that’s not always the case since several types of acceptance criteria exists:

• Simple accept – User has to click a button to accept the disclaimer.
• Accept with checkbox confirmation – the user has to tick a checkbox before the buttons are enabled.
• Accept with user input – the user has to type a specific sentence before the buttons are enabled.

It can be very hard to predict when you will be asked to accept a pre-trade disclaimer or what type of pre-trade disclaimer it might be. The only way to completely avoid this issue is to implement full support for pre-trade disclaimers in your application.

There are however scenarios where it might not be required:

• You are a while-label partner that does not rely on Saxo to manage disclaimers for your users. If that is the case please contact your relationship manager to ensure that no pre-trade disclaimers are configured for your structure.
• You are only trading simple instruments (stocks, ETFs, etc.) and can accept that you might once in a while will be required to use Saxo’s platforms to place the trade and accept the disclaimer before resuming trading via your own app.

Saxo plans to start enforcing the changes in six months, so from May 2025. Everything has already been released today, but without enforcement on trade placement, so Saxo recommends that you start implementing the required changes well ahead of the deadline.