City Index broker review: is it legit?
Online trading requires extreme cautiousness when it comes to choosing a broker. You can never be sure whether a company is legit or not until you read some reviews and work with it on your own. To help with your choice, we have prepared this City Index review.
About City Index
The company was founded in 1983. It is based in London, the UK. It is the leading brokerage service in the fields of CFD, forex, and spread betting. City Index has offices in the UK, UAE, Singapore, and Australia. The broker is regulated by the FCA, which is a reputable authority in the industry.
City Index claims to be a strong financial company with maximum security and transparency. As an argument, it is said that its parental company is GAIN Capital Holdings Inc, which is one of the biggest trading providers in the world. It has a good reputation, so it is assumed that City Index also cares about the opinion of its customers.
What can you trade with City Index?
The brokerage service has many assets to offer. Although it is mostly specified for CFDs, there also are other options. Here is a list of all product categories that can be found:
- CFDs: more than 4500
- Forex pairs: 84
- Cryptocurrencies as CFDs
Many of the CFDs listed can be used for spread-betting. This is more efficient when it comes to the taxes in the United Kingdom, so most users might want to consider using this as an alternative trading method.
Is City Index safe?
We have already mentioned that City Index’s parental company is GAIN Capital Holdings Inc. This is the first sign of a trustworthy broker because it has a good reputation and it is not likely for the company to deceive its clients.
In addition, City Index uses segregated bank accounts and is regulated by the FCA in England. The FSCS provides a compensation up to 85.000 pounds is the money is lost. Finally, there is no negative news about the company. This is also an important factor that must be taken into consideration when making a choice.
Fees at City Index
The fees at this company are somewhat the same as the average in the industry. Note that while using the MT4 platform, here you will have higher spreads than with the other platforms provided by the broker.
If the Advanced Trader platform is used, the average spread for the EUR/USD pair is 0.8 pips. With the MT software the spread is already 1.7 pips, so it is better to use the other platform.
Payment methods
The minimum deposit is 50 pounds. There are some options for making deposits and withdrawals:
- Bank cards
- Internet banking
- PayNow
- Cheque
- Bill
- Wire transfer
If you use bank cards to top-up your account, the payment will be instant but you will have to pay 2% as a commission. For all other methods, there are no fees but you might have to pay something to the payment system. Wire transfers and cheques take up to 3 days to be processed, all other methods are complete within one day.
Platforms
Except for the two platforms that we have already mentioned, City Index also uses the AT Pro and Web Trader software. The former has more than 130 indicators and 25 charting instruments along with an easy interface that suits both beginners and professionals. The latter is based on HTML5 and is very “light” and fast. It does not contain all of the functions available in AT Pro, but it is still a decent thing if you want to trade from your browser.
Customer support
The customer support at City Index can be contacted in several ways. First of all, there is the live chat where you can leave a ticket. If you are lucky, a support agent will answer in a few minutes and your issue will be resolved almost immediately. Otherwise, you will receive an answer to your email and can keep on writing there,
Support agents can also be contacted via social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Twitter. If your question is urgent and there is no answer through the live chat, this is a method to speed up the solution.
Customer reviews about City Index
There are both positive and negative opinions about City Index on the Internet. According to Trustpilot, 37% of the reviews are Excellent and 32% are Bad. Therefore, the broker has a sharp 3.0/5 on this website. Here are some examples of the reviews.
A user, Mat Kerouac, says that he has been working with the company for several years and had no issues with withdrawals. He also states that he has no idea why there are so many reviews that call City Index a scam. It is quite possible that this is an informational attack of a competitor.
As the user writes, the execution time is too long, there is a lot of slippages, it takes around 8 minutes for the customer support to answer by phone. He is extremely disappointed and decided to work with another company.
Conclusion
Although City Index seemed to be a good choice in the beginning due to regulations and the good reputation of its parental company, the user reviews show that everything is not that good here. It is recommended that you remain careful with this company because it does not have many positive opinions from customers.
What about your experience with City Index?