The UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) has provided an update to clients of Foreign Currency Innovations Ltd, trading as FCI Markets.

The brokerage has been authorised by FCA since July 2014. FCI offered a range of brokerage services including contracts for differences (CFDs), rolling spot currency contracts and spread bets.

FCI entered creditors’ voluntary liquidation on 10 March 2023 with James Patchett of Turpin Baker Armstrong and Stephen Katz of Begbies Traynor appointed as Joint Liquidators.

FSCS has been working with the Joint Liquidators to understand whether there are likely to be any valid claims that would allow the Scheme to pay compensation. FSCS will now be opening its online claims service to claims.

The documentation that the Joint Liquidators have been able to get from FCI and send to FSCS to help with its investigation has been limited. So, FSCS is asking customers to send it the following evidence to help it process their claim:

• Copies of contracts with FCI (terms of business or client agreements),
• Evidence of investments made / positions held,
• Bank statements showing monies transferred to or received from FCI,
• Annual statements
• Brochures or any other promotional material provided by FCI,
• Copies of any complaints made to FCI, along with any responses received,
• Any other correspondence with the firm in relation to the investments made / positions held.

Professional clients who believe they ought to have been categorised as retail clients should provide any relevant questionnaires and explain why they believe they have been miscategorised, whether they were aware of being miscategorised and copies of correspondence on this.

Although FSCS is accepting claims against FCI, they will not be immediately passed to its claims processing teams for assessment. This is because FSCS is still investigating the firm to see if any claims meet the qualifying conditions for compensation, and this may take some time.

FSCS will provide updated information via a dedicated webpage as its investigation progresses.