IG is part of IG Group, which has several operating companies offering a variety of speculative products to a retail and professional client base. The Company was founded in 1974, is a member of the FTSE 250, has a market cap in excess of £1.6 billion and has over 130,000 active clients worldwide.
IG Group’s core businesses provide online derivatives trading services to an international retail client base.They provide easy access to global financial markets via an award-winning dealing platform - PureDeal & L2Dealer - and offer the flexibility to trade across multiple asset classes from one account.
Through their main businesses, IG Index and IG Markets, they provide over 14,000 spread betting and CFD products on a huge range of financial markets, including forex, stock indices, shares, commodities, binaries, options and interest rates. They are developing a presence in the United States, through Nadex a retail binary options product.
The group has two operational businesses:
IGIndex (Financial spread betting)
- Offers you tax efficient levered trading
- UK spread betting – the largest and longest-running spread betting company in the World
- Multi-award-winning and recognised as the UK's market leader
- 40,000+ clients in 89 countries, with the majority of clients being UK based
- At the forefront of innovation and a pioneer of new product features, including a range of new mobile apps
IG Markets (Contracts for Difference and Forex)
- Offers you execution and automatic price improvements
- Global CFD trading including Direct Market Access (DMA) services
- Clients in 130 countries and a network of global partners
- Independently confirmed as the most popular CFD provider in the UK and Australia
We recommend you open an account with IG Group online today. Whether you open an
IGIndex or an
IGMarkets account you will benefit from access to an impressive trading platform, trade with competitive & transparent prices backed by excellent client service and a group with a strong balance sheet. Highly recommended.
New Customer Offer
When you open an account you have a choice whether to open an account at IGindex or IGMarkets
- IGindex financial spread betting accounts
Suitable for sophisticated retail investors and institutional investors. Favourable tax treatment in the UK might limit any tax you pay on capital gains. Since capital gains can be considerable as trades are levered, this is the account chosen by the vast majority of UK clients of IG. Remember that financial spread betting is a leveraged product and can result in losses that exceed your initial deposit. Spread betting may not be suitable for everyone, so please ensure that you fully understand the risks involved.
- A CFD account at IG Markets
IGmarkets is a market-maker in financial derivatives, principally Contracts for Difference (CFDs) on shares and indices, as well as a leading dealer in margined Foreign Exchange. Clients include brokers, fund managers and trading companies as well as private investors.
Wagering Requirement
Background
IG Index, the original IG Group company, was founded in 1974. It was the first financial spread betting company in Britain, and is today the leading operation of its type in the world. The group expanded rapidly in the 1990s with the introduction of Foreign Exchange dealing and Contracts for Differences.
Today IG Group is the leading global provider of contracts for
Difference (CFDs) and spread betting to retail investors in the UK.
Through their primary businesses, IG Index and IG Markets,
they offer these services to over 130,000 clients across more
than 130 countries.
IG's award-winning dealing platforms provide clients with easy
access to global financial markets and the flexibility to trade across multiple asset classes and the company offers a range of over 14,000
equity, equity index, commodity, forex, interest rate and binary
contracts, covering most major financial markets.
IG Group Holdings plc has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 2005 and is an established member of the FTSE 250. The head office is in London, with other offices in Amsterdam, Beijing, Chicago, Durban, Düsseldorf, Johannesburg, Lisbon,
Luxembourg, Madrid, Melbourne, Milan, Paris, Singapore, Stockholm and Tokyo. The Group is debt-free and has high levels of capital and
liquidity to provide confidence to clients and other counterparties.
IG Group adopts a best-practice approach to client money protection. They follow client asset rules set by the UK’s
Financial Services Authority (FSA) and similar rules of other
regulators in whose jurisdiction they operate. In the UK, Europe,
US and Asia Pacific all retail clients funds are segregated into separate "client money" bank accounts. In the wake of MG Global this is to be welcomed.
Odds and Markets
IG allows you Direct Market Access to trade directly in all the major world equity markets. This allows you to place orders inside the market spread, gain full access to prices in size and gauge the liquidity on either side of the exchange.
The transparency and flexibility of DMA are key tools for advanced traders, and DMA solutions enable you to harness these advantages. With Direct Market Access to the major equity exchanges you can:
- Trade inside the market spread by dealing straight into the order book
- Enter stock auctions, including those held outside normal trading hours
- View market depth and liquidity with transparent Level 2 pricing
- Assess the likely future movements of stocks by comparing buying and selling interest rates
- Trade the key equity markets
PureDMA and L2 Dealer give you Direct Market Access, allowing you to interact directly with the live order book. Trading CFDs with DMA gives you access to the major equity markets: LSE SETS, NASDAQ, NYSE, Amex, Euronext, Xetra Germany, MIB Italy, BME Spain, OMX Sweden, OSE Norway, ISEQ Ireland, Athex Greece, SWX Switzerland, ASX Australia, SGX Singapore, JSE South Africa, TSX Canada.
The group's multi-venue technology means that as well as using traditional exchanges, their DMA platforms now also source prices from Europe’s three leading Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTFs). This enables you to benefit from additional market liquidity and even better prices on Direct Market Access share CFDs.
You should note the way in which the MTF data is presented is slightly different depending on whether you use PureDMA or L2 Dealer: PureDMA instantly searches all four venues and puts the best prices in the order book, but does not separate prices according to their venue - instead it lists them in a ‘hybrid’ layout. When you click one of these prices, your order is instantly routed to the relevant venue. By routing your order across multiple order books the new technology also makes it more likely that the order will be filled, but you will only ever be charged one commission per order. If your requested size and price is not available, your order will be routed to the primary exchange, where the greatest level of liquidity is generally available.
If you are using L2 Dealer, you have the option of viewing separate order books individually. For example, if you are trading a share that is listed on the LSE, Chi-X, BATS and Turquoise, you can select the name of each exchange separately to see just those prices, or you can view a hybrid order book which simply lists the best prices, regardless of venue.
Data feeds and charges
If you are using PureDMA, a large number of Level 2 (DMA) data feeds are provided on a charge-and-refund system and can be activated from the My Account section in PureDeal. However, the introduction of MTFs means IG are now able to offer PureDMA users free live prices using MTF data on top UK and European shares. Therefore, if you do not wish to pay for the live data from the major exchanges, you will be able to view the live prices from the no-fee MTFs. With over 1450 UK and European shares covered, this will provide free live data on most top UK and European stocks. In addition, if you place an order using the free prices, but a better fill exists on a fee-liable venue, your order will be processed at the better price, whether it is visible to you or not.
Note that while you are trading based on underlying market prices and depth, what you actually receive on placing a trade is a CFD from IG.
Website
IG runs an award-winning web dealing platform, PureDeal, which combines reliability and security with high-speed execution. You'll also find a number of highly customisable, fully-integrated tools that help to put you in control.
Some of the platform’s key features include:
- Fully-customisable interface, enabling clients to monitor favourite markets with ease
- Trading tools including Reuters news feeds, research and
market analysis
- Extensive charting packages with real-time charts, inbuilt
trading pattern software and the ability to amend orders
directly through the charts
- Direct Market Access (DMA) capability, enabling you to
trade straight into the order book of equity exchanges and
view the full market depth.
IGindex also offers L2 Dealer which can be activated from the PureDeal Platform. Originally designed as an in-house product L2Dealer gives you access to multilateral trading facilities (MTFS) which routes your orders through alternative venues including BATS, Chi-X and Turquoise - for the best price available. L2Dealer also gives you access to off-book activity to take advantage of dark liquidity pools. Given that over 30% of liquidity of FTSE 100 pass through other venues than the LSE access to these alternative venues can provide a significant price improvement; L2Dealer allows you partially Dark Pool fill your order to gain a price improvement.
The PureDeal platform is fully mobile enabled and the firm has released apps for the iPhone, Android and
BlackBerry phones and the iPad, including the UK’s first mobile DMA service for CFDs. You can access the apps once you join IGindex.
Customer Service
Freephone: 0800 195 6300
International: +44 (0)20 7633 5555
Helpdesk (24hrs Mon-Fri)
Freephone: 0800 195 8009
International: +44 (0)20 7633 5320
Dealing desk (24hrs Mon-Fri)
Tel: +44 (0)20 7633 5323
Office address
IG Markets Ltd, Friars House
157-168 Blackfriars Road
London SE1 8EZ
Switchboard (08.00-18.00): +44 (0)20 7896 0011
Fax: +44 (0)20 7896 0010
Customer Service Email
helpdesk@ igmarkets.com
Customer Service Telephone Number
+44 (0)20 7633 5300
