IC Markets Philippines: Which Entity Holds Your Account, and What It Really Costs

What is genuinely checkable about IC Markets

• Swap Free is offered on Raw Spread and Standard across MT4, MT5 and cTrader on 90+ instruments, with the per-symbol overnight fee published rather than hidden (checked 2 September 2026)
• No minimum deposit on Raw Spread, cTrader Raw Spread or Standard, so an account can be opened small and tested on a free demo first
• Wide platform choice - MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader and TradingView
• The broker charges no deposit or withdrawal fee of its own; third-party bank or card fees can still apply

Explore the specifics

Also on this site: MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 setup and the Equinix NY4 server location against Manila time, a free demo that sidesteps the currency-conversion question entirely, sign-in help for the portal versus the trading terminals, a margin and Swap Free calculator, and support channels with realistic waiting times.

Two instrument pages sit alongside those. Gold at IC Markets works the USD 62 per-lot overnight holding fee on a Swap Free position through against a Manila night, and shows the margin ladder on 100 ounces tier by tier. What is moving right now reads the current crude oil and index stories against the session that is actually open while a Philippine trader is at the screen, and against what holding one of those positions overnight costs.

IC Markets Philippines - the verdict in one paragraph

A trader in the Philippines does not contract with an Australian or Cypriot company. The broker's own registration feed, checked 2 September 2026, routes the Philippines by default to Raw Trading Ltd, a Seychelles company (registration 8419879-1) holding Securities Dealer's licence SD018 from the Seychelles Financial Services Authority. IC Markets holds no SEC Philippines secondary licence, and SEC Philippines separately publishes advisories about unregistered offshore forex and CFD platforms. The published costs are checkable: USD 3.50 per lot per side on Raw Spread, USD 0 commission with spreads from 0.8 pips on Standard, no minimum deposit on either, and a Swap Free option on both that replaces overnight interest with a flat per-lot holding fee - USD 62 a night on gold, for the largest published example. Every peso would still convert into one of ten base currencies that does not include PHP, since IC Markets has no GCash, Maya, GrabPay, InstaPay or PESONet rail. CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money. Read what other users report on Trustpilot alongside this page, not instead of it.

Which company actually holds a Filipino trader's account

IC Markets and IC Markets Global are trading names, not the name of a single company. According to IC Markets' own corporate pages, the brand is used by at least four separate legal entities: Raw Trading Ltd in Seychelles (registration 8419879-1), IC Markets (EU) Ltd in Cyprus (CySEC CIF 362/18), International Capital Markets Pty Ltd in Australia (regulated by ASIC), and IC Trading (Mauritius) Ltd. These are described as separate companies, not branches of one licence.

For the Philippines, the entity that matters is Raw Trading Ltd, licensed by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority under Securities Dealer's licence SD018. On IC Markets' registration feed, checked 2 September 2026, the Philippines shows as open and routed by default to branch FSA(3) - that same Raw Trading Ltd entity - with introducing-broker activity enabled; a second branch listed only as FSC_ICT(12) is also registered against the country, without further detail on what that branch specifically covers.

No SEC Philippines licence, and what SEC PH's advisories generally cover

IC Markets holds no secondary licence from the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Philippines. The account a Filipino trader opens is regulated only at the Seychelles level, under FSA licence SD018 held by Raw Trading Ltd - there is no additional layer of Philippine oversight sitting on top of that.

SEC Philippines does regularly publish public advisories warning about unregistered or offshore forex and CFD platforms operating in the country. This is a general pattern in how SEC PH operates, not a confirmed statement that IC Markets has been named in any specific advisory - readers should check SEC PH's current advisory list themselves rather than rely on a secondhand claim either way.

Leverage up to 1:5000 is real, but it's tiered, not flat

IC Markets advertises leverage of up to 1:5000 on MetaTrader and up to 1:1000 on cTrader, and both figures are accurate as ceilings. What most descriptions of the broker leave out is that leverage steps down as position size grows, with margin calculated separately on each slice of a trade that falls into a given tier, not on the position as a whole.

In IC Markets' own published USDCHF example, the first 0-25 lots of a position carry 1:5000, the next 25-50 lots step down to 1:3000, and any volume above 50 lots is margined at 1:1000. Available leverage is also cut temporarily during Higher Margin Requirement windows - daily, from 30 minutes before to 15 minutes after market close/open; on weekends, from one hour before Friday's close to 30 minutes after Monday's open; and around major news releases, from 15 minutes before to one minute after. Stop out is set at 50% across every account type.

Swap Free is not free - it's a fixed overnight fee

Swap Free is available on Raw Spread and Standard accounts, across MT4, MT5 and cTrader, on more than 90 instruments. IC Markets does not market it as an Islamic or Shariah-compliant product - there is no stated Shariah board and no certification behind it - and the broker reserves the right to remove Swap Free status from an account without explanation.

Instead of a swap, a fixed holding commission is charged per lot per night, and it varies sharply by instrument: IC Markets' published examples include USD 11 on EURUSD, USD 62 on XAUUSD (gold), USD 25 on US30, USD 41.85 on BTCUSD, USD 9 on AUDCAD, USD 15 on EURCHF, USD 26 on GBPCHF, USD 16 on GBPJPY, and USD 9 on XAGUSD (silver) - figures that make 'Swap Free' a different cost structure, not a discount.

PHP is not one of the ten account currencies, and there is no Philippine funding rail

IC Markets accounts are held in one of exactly ten base currencies: USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, SGD, NZD, JPY, CHF, HKD, and CAD. PHP is not among them, so any peso deposit is converted into one of those ten currencies somewhere in the funding chain.

IC Markets' published deposit methods do not include GCash, Maya, GrabPay, InstaPay, or PESONet; the broker's only country-specific local rails are Thai Internet Banking and Vietnamese Internet Banking, limited to Thailand and Vietnam respectively. A Filipino trader is left with general international options - bank cards, PayPal, Neteller, Skrill, UnionPay, bank wire, or FasaPay among others - each involving its own currency conversion, typically handled by the card issuer or bank rather than by IC Markets.

Time zones: Manila runs on its own clock, and so do the trading servers

The Philippines sits on Asia/Manila time, UTC+8 all year with no daylight-saving shift. MT4 and MT5 run on IC Markets' Equinix NY4 data centre in New York, which sits at UTC-5 in winter (EST) and UTC-4 in summer (EDT) - a 13-hour or 12-hour gap from Manila. cTrader runs on servers in London, at UTC+0 in winter (GMT) and UTC+1 in summer (BST) - an 8-hour or 7-hour gap from Manila.

In practical terms, the New York session - where the MT4/MT5 servers sit - runs mostly through the Philippine evening and night, while the London session - where cTrader's servers sit - lines up more with Philippine daytime and early evening. That makes cTrader's server location objectively closer to a Filipino trader's waking hours than MT4/MT5's. This page is written by an independent, affiliate-supported site covering IC Markets for Philippine readers; it is not published by IC Markets, and CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money.