Licence Scope

A licence's scope is the list of activities a firm is actually permitted to carry on, and it varies far more than the word regulated suggests. The register entry records permissions in the supervisor's own vocabulary — receiving and transmitting orders, executing orders on behalf of clients, dealing on own account, holding client money, providing investment advice — and a firm may hold some of these and not others. The differences are commercial as well as technical. A firm permitted to deal on own account may take the other side of your trade; one restricted to reception and transmission may not, and has to pass orders elsewhere. A firm without permission to hold client money must route deposits to a third party that has it. Scope also carries client-type limits, so a permission valid for professional clients does not automatically extend to retail ones. Checking scope is what turns a register lookup from confirming that a firm exists into confirming that it is allowed to do the thing it is offering you.