How the EU Broker Execution Index is calculated

Source: Live snapshots taken from each broker's published EUR/USD spread feed at 09:00, 13:00, 17:00, and 21:00 CET on every UK/EU trading day in the measurement window.

Notes: Brokers without a public live-spread feed receive the broker-published 'typical' figure with a 0.2-pip penalty applied to compensate for the unverifiability gap.

Source: Third-party probes from EU IP locations (Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Dublin) to the broker's authenticated client portal every 5 minutes. Maintenance windows announced in advance are excluded.

Notes: Authenticated portal not public homepage — homepage uptime is misleading because the real trading infrastructure is behind login.

Source: Broker's most recent MiFID II RTS 28 annual best-execution report (mandatory disclosure for EU-regulated brokers). Slippage rate, average execution time, percentage of orders filled at the requested price.

Notes: Brokers that do not publish RTS 28 reports lose all 20 points in this category. The publication itself is the regulatory minimum — no special credit for compliance.

Source: Number of tier-1 regulator licences (FCA, BaFin, AMF, CONSOB, CySEC, FINMA, AFM, etc.) directly held by the entity serving EU retail clients. Verified against each regulator's public register.

Notes: Group licences not directly held by the EU-serving entity do not count. We follow the contract path, not the marketing path.

Source: Most recent audited annual report. Capital adequacy ratio vs the CRR/CRD requirement for the broker's category. Big-4 auditor preferred — non-Big-4 auditor incurs a documentation request.

Notes: We do not penalise broker size — small EU-licensed brokers can score full marks if their capital ratio is healthy. Bias is against under-capitalised growth.

Source: Direct member of an EU investor compensation scheme (ICF Cyprus, FSCS UK, FGD Germany, etc.) with verified scheme membership ID.

Notes: Five-point category — included because it is binary and verifiable. The size of the protection is documented in each broker review.

Source: Penalties, sanctions, or formal warnings published by any tier-1 regulator against the broker entity in the trailing 12 months.

Notes: Trailing 12-month rolling window. A single resolved penalty does not zero the score, but stacked actions do.