One in five Plus500 customers restart trading after crackdown
TROUBLED spreadbetter Plus500 yesterday said one in five customer who had their accounts frozen in the wake of a regulatory crackdown had restarted trading.
The company, currently a takeover target of Playtech, said 23,000 customers had logged onto their accounts since the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) forced the company to freeze accounts and stop taking new customers last month.
Before that, the regulator had raised concerns Plus500’s anti-money laundering checks were not robust enough.
Of the 23,000, 10,147 had completed anti-money laundering checks and 83 per cent of those had their accounts unfrozen.
A total of 5,205 re-started trading and 457 cashed out all of their funds.
Shares in the group crashed close to 70 per cent when the probe by the FCA was first revealed to the stock market.