Prop Firms Are Getting Broker Licences

Prop Firms Are Getting Broker Licences, and the Best Ones May Stop Looking Like Props at All

For a long time, the default assumption was that brokers would copy the prop model, not the other way around. That is no longer the whole story. The more serious shift is that some of the largest prop brands have been moving toward licensed brokerage structures, regulated entities, and broker level infrastructure. What looked like a side experiment in 2024 now reads more like the start of a structural change in the industry.

FTMO was the clearest early signal. In May 2024, the company hired former Skilling chief executive Michael Kamerman to lead its brokerage division. At the time, that looked like a strong hint. With hindsight, it looks like an opening move. In February 2025, CVC agreed to sell OANDA to FTMO, and the deal was completed in December 2025 after regulatory approvals. That was not a prop firm adding a side product. That was a prop giant buying a major global broker and proving that the line between the two models was already breaking down.

FundingPips points to a second version of the same trend. Its own site says the company holds an International Brokerage and Clearing House License, while also stating that it does not conduct brokerage services or offer real trading accounts on that website. That is the revealing part. A licence does not have to mean a firm wants to become a full retail broker tomorrow. It can also mean the firm wants regulatory cover, better access to banking and payments, cleaner relationships with tech vendors, and optionality for the future.

Alpha Capital shows how this can already work in practice. Its website openly promotes ACG Markets, a Seychelles licensed broker, as a regulated gateway to global markets. That is not the old prop model pretending regulation does not matter. It is a hybrid structure where the prop brand and the licensed broker can sit next to each other and serve different strategic purposes.

The pressure behind this shift is not hard to understand. Banking and payment access have become more sensitive for prop firms. MetaTrader access became more difficult after the grey label crackdown. Liquidity, hedging, and market access are easier to manage when a group has licensed infrastructure instead of relying on loose workarounds. FundingPips losing MetaTrader access in early 2024 and later returning to MT5 after obtaining a direct MetaQuotes licence is one of the clearest examples of why firms started moving in this direction. E8 now also operates MT5 through its Saint Lucia entity while still describing customer payments as being for educational software and services, which shows how brokerage style entities and prop style front ends can coexist inside the same commercial structure.

That is why the deeper story is not simply that props are getting broker licences. The deeper story is that the strongest props are trying to turn themselves into broader trading groups. Some will use licences to support payments, platform access, and institutional relationships. Some will use them to hedge, price, or distribute live products. And a few, like FTMO, have already gone much further than that. Once a prop firm starts building regulated entities, hiring broker executives, and buying brokers outright, it is no longer just defending its model. It is evolving past it.

Editorial source note: This article was independently written for editorial purposes based on publicly available reporting and company materials. It does not reproduce source wording.

Source: Prop Weekly by David Kimberley, June 4, 2024.