Evidence before claims: what an IB's page may say, and must

The principle: a claim needs a source

Everything on an introducing broker's page is one of two kinds of statement. Some describe the IB's own offer — what they teach, in which language, how often, through which channel. The IB can vouch for those. The rest are statements about the world: results, partnerships, what clients achieved, what a broker is licensed to do. Those need something outside the IB to stand on, and they are where partners get into trouble.

The stakes explain the strictness. The reader of an IB's page is about to open an account for a leveraged product. When ESMA announced its restrictions on contracts for difference (CFDs) in March 2018, it cited figures showing that 74–89% of retail accounts typically lose money on their investments¹. A page that leaves that reader feeling safer than the facts warrant has done harm, whatever its author intended.

The claim ladder

Few claims are simply true or false when they arrive. Most sit somewhere between, and the useful question is what each position may be used for. Gravity's research gives every external claim a status rather than treating it as fact⁶, and the same four rungs work for anyone checking their own page.

The ladder climbs one way only: by adding evidence. Repeating a claim, rewording it or softening it with "up to" does not move it up a rung. The same discipline applies to audience figures — reach, engagement, follower counts — which have their own traps, covered in how to read a trading audience honestly.

The claims that get partners into trouble

The claims below are the familiar ones. None needs to be false to cause a problem. Each misleads by what it leaves out.

The fourth row is the easiest to cross by accident. An IB introduces; the broker holds the money, executes the trades and answers to its regulator. Wording that blurs the line — "trade with me", "my accounts", "our platform" — suggests a role the IB does not have. What an introducing broker is sets out where the line sits.

Can an IB show trading results?

Only with care, and often not at all. The US Federal Trade Commission's guidance on endorsements says that where an advertiser has no proof that an endorser's experience is what people will generally achieve, the ad must make clear what the generally expected results are⁴. A single good month is exactly that kind of experience.

For copy trading, ESMA's 2023 supervisory briefing sets out what supervisors look for when a firm shows past performance: it should be a fair representation, not the most prominent element of the communication, and cover the preceding five years — or the whole life of the service if shorter, based on complete twelve-month periods⁵. Those expectations are addressed to investment firms, not to IBs. They still show the standard a results claim is measured against, and a screenshot meets none of it.

The risk warning

A risk warning is a plain statement, placed where it cannot be missed, that the product can lose the reader money. On a page that links to a leveraged-trading broker it is the one element that must never be missing.

For CFDs, regulators have set its form. The measures ESMA agreed in March 2018 included leverage limits on opening positions, a margin close-out rule, negative balance protection, a restriction on incentives to trade, and a standardised risk warning including the percentage of losses on the CFD provider's retail investor accounts¹. The UK Financial Conduct Authority's rules of 2019, applying to CFDs from 1 August that year, likewise required a standardised risk warning telling potential customers the percentage of the firm's retail client accounts that make losses².

Those rules bind the broker, which publishes its own figure. But the reader meets the IB's words first, so the warning belongs on the IB's page too — near the offer, and again in the footer, not behind a link. Where a percentage is used, it is the broker's to state; take it from the broker and change it when they do.

For the exact wording regulators require in the EU, the UK, Australia and the DIFC, and where it must sit on a page, see forex risk warnings by region.

Promotion rules can reach the IB directly. The FCA's 2024 guidance on financial promotions on social media says that unauthorised persons, such as social media influencers, who promote a regulated financial product without approval from an appropriate FCA-authorised person may be committing a criminal offence, and that promotions must be fair, clear and not misleading³. Other countries have their own versions. Check the rules where you and your audience are.

Saying that the broker pays you

An IB is paid by the broker on what their clients do, under a partner agreement. That payment changes how a reader should weigh the IB's recommendation, which is why it should be said. The FTC explains its Endorsement Guides this way: where a connection between an endorser and a marketer is one that a significant minority of consumers would not expect, and it would affect how they evaluate the endorsement, it should be disclosed clearly and conspicuously⁴.

For affiliate links the same guidance suggests plain words about earning commission, placed close to the recommendation, and notes that a bare "affiliate link" label may not be understood⁴. That is US guidance, but the principle travels: say it in plain words, in the page's own language, near the link rather than in a footnote.

Whose rules apply

Rules on financial promotion can follow the audience as well as the author. An IB living in one country and writing in Arabic for readers in several others may fall within more than one regime at once. The sequence is simple even when the law is not: know where your readers are, check the rules there, and ask your broker's compliance team. The page itself — what it should hold, and why it matters more than the feed — is covered in why an IB needs a website, not just a feed.

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