At a glance

Over-the-counter (OTC) leveraged derivatives enable traders to take advantage of changes in an asset’s price without owning the asset itself. A trader can take a position on a financial instrument, ‘buying’ if they think the price will go up or ‘selling’ if they believe it will go down, while only putting down a percentage (known as margin) of the value of their trade as security. Trading with leverage can lead to magnified profits but also amplified losses, the size of which depends on the direction and magnitude of price movements. With us, traders get access to a range of risk-mitigation measures, including stops and limits. Plus, retail accounts include negative-balance protection.¹

Leveraged derivatives can be found under the wrapper of CFDs and spread bets, with CFDs being the most popular globally. We’re in the lead of that global demand, being the world’s No.1 CFD provider.² Spread betting is a tax-free³ alternative to CFDs which is only available in the UK and Ireland – and we’re the No.1² provider for that, as well.

Exchange-traded derivatives are financial contracts traded on a regulated exchange. We give ambitious traders these products under our tastytrade, and Spectrum Markets; brands.

tastytrade is a high-growth, high-margin online brokerage and investor education platform, with a growing share of the US-listed derivatives market, primarily through options and futures. tastytrade combines fun and entertaining content with deep quantitative and probability-based analysis, offering traders something they’ve never seen before.

Spectrum Markets is our European multilateral trading facility (MTF), launched in October 2019. It’s specifically designed to provide liquidity for retail traders, offering access to opportunities on global markets 24-hours a day through a powerful exchange – all with limited risk. Before we launched Spectrum Markets, there was a sizeable and well-established market for turbo warrants, and we’re already successfully taking on the challenge of conquering that market with our Turbo24 product.

Our stock-trading and investment offerings give traditional investors a range of non-leveraged products to choose from.

We use the same market-leading technology that powers our OTC leveraged derivatives on our execution-only stock-trading services. Entrepreneurial investors can buy and sell over 12,000 global shares and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with competitive and transparent transaction fees. Those in the UK can also trade within a tax-efficient ISA or SIPP wrapper.

We launched our stock-trading products in the UK in 2014, giving us another way to power the pursuit of financial freedom for the ambitious. In addition to giving our OTC leveraged-derivative traders the chance to place their non-leveraged portfolio with us, we attracted a completely new audience. Plus, our stock-trading service is also available to investors in Australia.

IG Smart Portfolios is a discretionary managed investment service, launched in partnership with BlackRock in April 2017. All of these portfolios are based on iShares ETFs with a blend of commodities, equities and fixed-income assets, designed to suit different risk appetites and objectives.

¹Negative balance protection is a legal requirement in the UK which means your bank account with us can never fall below zero. Negative balance protection does not apply to professional traders.
²Based on revenue excluding FX (from published financial statements, June 2023).
³Tax laws are subject to change and depend on individual circumstances. Tax law may differ in a jurisdiction other than the UK.