Not upheld: General financial advice complaint against XTB Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Mr V complained that XTB Limited failed to inform him that his CFD gold positions would expire after 365 days, resulting in financial loss when the positions were automatically closed in October 2024. XTB argued it had disclosed the expiration date in its terms of business, key information document, best execution policy, and on its trading platform. The ombudsman reviewed the disclosure materials and found that while the 365-day expiry was not universally standard across CFD providers and required navigation into the app to locate, XTB had provided sufficient information through multiple channels for Mr V to have been aware of the feature. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman concluded that XTB provided sufficient information about the 365-day expiration date through multiple channels: contractual terms, key information documents, the trading platform interface, and help centre resources. While acknowledging that the 365-day expiry is not universal across CFD providers and that Mr V had to navigate into the app to find this information, the ombudsman found this was not unreasonable given the execution only nature of the account and the prominence of the expiry date within the information tab. The ombudsman rejected the argument that the product should not be classified as a CFD due to the expiry feature, finding that it retained core CFD characteristics. The ombudsman also found nothing in Mr V's call with the account manager that should have alerted XTB to his lack of awareness.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website