What to Check in a Client Agreement Before You Sign

The one document that is actually about your account

Comparison pages describe a brand. The client agreement describes the contract you are entering, with a named company, under a named legal system. It is the only document in the process that is binding, and nearly every question that comparison content answers vaguely — which regulator, what leverage, what costs, what happens in a dispute — is answered in it precisely. It is also long, dull and presented at the moment of least patience, which is why almost nobody reads it and why reading it is an advantage.

Find the entity first

Before anything else, identify the company you are contracting with: its legal name, its registered address, and the authority named as its regulator. That single fact determines the rulebook, the leverage cap, whether negative balance protection applies, which compensation scheme covers you and to what limit, and which complaints route exists. A brand operating several entities will present near-identical websites for each, so the agreement is where the difference becomes visible. It is also the name to take to the regulator's public register.

The order-execution policy

Usually a separate annexe, and the most informative part. It states how orders are handled, whether the firm may act as counterparty to your trade, where quotes come from, and what happens when a price moves between request and fill. Look specifically for the treatment of slippage — whether it is applied in both directions or only against you — and for any discretion the firm keeps to reject, requote or cancel. Terms allowing a trade to be voided after the fact, on grounds like "manifest error" or "abusive trading", deserve reading closely enough to know what they cover.

The costs that are not on the pricing page

The pricing page carries spread and commission. The agreement and its fee schedule carry the rest: inactivity charges and when they begin, withdrawal fees by method and any minimum, currency-conversion treatment when the account currency differs from the instrument's, the swap calculation and the weekday on which it is applied at triple weight, and any administration charge on a swap-free account. None of these appear on a trade ticket, which is exactly why they need finding in advance.

What can change, and how you find out

Almost every agreement lets the firm amend terms, adjust leverage, or change margin requirements. What varies is the notice period and the notification method — and a clause allowing changes to take effect immediately in "abnormal market conditions", notified by a website update alone, is a materially different arrangement from one requiring advance written notice. The same section usually covers when the firm may close positions or restrict an account, which is worth knowing before it happens rather than after.

Complaints, governing law, and reading it in twenty minutes

Check where a dispute goes: the internal complaints procedure, its deadlines, the external ombudsman or scheme available afterwards, and the governing law and courts. A jurisdiction far from where you live is not necessarily improper, but it is the practical difference between a dispute you can pursue and one you cannot. If time is short, four searches cover most of the value: the entity name, "execution", "fees", and "amend" or "vary". That is twenty minutes against a decision that involves your money.