TAG Markets Licence: How to Verify It Yourself (and What It Does Not Cover)

The details you are checking

• Legal entity: T.M. Financials Ltd (trading as Tag Markets)
• Jurisdiction: Mauritius
• Company number: C185265
• Regulator: Financial Services Commission (FSC) Mauritius
• Licence type: Investment Dealer
• Licence category: SEC-2.1B Investment Dealer (Full Service Dealer excluding Underwriting)
• Date of licence: 21/02/2022
• Annotations on the register entry: none

Search by company name, not by number. The register indexes licensees by name, and TAG’s own site tells you to search "T.M. Financials Ltd". That search returns exactly one row, with the details above. See the section below on why a licence number circulating online does not match this entry.

How to check it in three minutes

1. Open the FSC Mauritius Online Public Register: opr.fscmauritius.org (the regulator’s own site — do not use a link from a marketing message, type or paste it yourself).
2. Search the licensee name T.M. Financials Ltd. Search by name rather than number — the register’s name search is the more forgiving field.
3. Open the result and compare: entity name, licence category (Investment Dealer), licence number, and status. Status is the field that matters — a licence can exist and be suspended or revoked.
4. Cross-check the licence number against what the company publishes in its own website footer. They should match exactly. If they do not, stop.

Do the same check for the South African entity if it was quoted to you: search FSP 55237 on the FSCA register. Remember TAG’s own disclosure — that entity provides marketing services only; the trading account is with the Mauritius entity.

Why critics say the licence was "terminated" — and what the register actually shows

This is the strongest argument made against TAG Markets, so it gets a full answer rather than a dismissal.

The claim. The FSC published a Public Notice on 27 March 2024 stating that the Investment Dealer (Broker) Licence GB21026474 was surrendered under section 28(5) of the Financial Services Act and "stands terminated with effect from 18 March 2024". That notice is real, it is on the FSC’s own website, and critics quote it accurately.

The detail the critics skip. That notice names a different licensee: Pure North Markets Ltd. The live register carries a separate entry for T.M. Financials Ltd — licensed 21/02/2022 as a SEC-2.1B Investment Dealer (Full Service Dealer excluding Underwriting), administered by AAcapital International Limited at 30 St Georges Street, 3rd Floor Manor House, Port Louis, with the Annotations column blank. That entry sits in the active register, not in the FSC’s separate Surrendered Licences list. The screenshot above is that row; run the search yourself and you will get the same one.

To be complete rather than convenient: the two companies do share history — the client-funds insurance certificate lists T.M. Financials Ltd at the Trianon address that also appears on the Pure North notice. So this is not two unrelated strangers who happen to share a number. What it is: a licence record in T.M. Financials Ltd’s own name, dated 2022, still listed, unannotated — and a separate, older licence that was given up in 2024.

Where TAG is genuinely at fault. TAG Markets’ own website publishes "License No. GB21026474" as its licence number. That number belongs to the terminated Pure North Markets licence. Whether that is a copy-paste error carried over from a previous arrangement or something that needs a fuller explanation, it is TAG’s to fix — and until they fix it, every critic gets a free, accurate-looking hit. If it matters to you, ask TAG support to confirm the licence number in writing and keep the answer.

What to do about it. Do not verify by number. Search the register by the name T.M. Financials Ltd, which is what TAG’s own site instructs, and read the row you get. That row is the authoritative answer, and it is the same one you will find whether you came here from a marketing message or from an article calling the whole thing a fraud.

The clone-firm check most people skip

The commonest broker fraud is not an invented licence — it is a real licence belonging to someone else, pasted onto a lookalike website. Two habits defeat it: (1) confirm the domain you are depositing through is the one the regulator or the licensed entity itself publishes, and (2) confirm the entity name on the register matches the entity named in the client agreement you are about to sign. If the agreement names a company that is not on the register, the licence is not yours to rely on.

What FSC Mauritius regulation actually gives you

Real things: a licensing regime with fit-and-proper requirements, capital rules, client-money segregation obligations, audited reporting, and a complaints route to a real regulator that can suspend or revoke a licence.

What it does not give you, stated plainly: no EU/UK-style investor compensation scheme, no FSCS-equivalent payout if the firm fails, lighter conduct supervision than the FCA, CySEC or ASIC, and practical difficulty enforcing anything from another continent. TAG says this itself: "Tag Markets is not authorised or regulated by any European Union regulatory authority. Clients do not benefit from EU investor protection schemes, compensation funds, or regulatory safeguards."

Honest comparison to the tier-1 regulators

This is the honest trade-off at the centre of the whole decision: the offshore licence is what makes high leverage and a $10 minimum possible at all, and it is also what removes the statutory safety net. The private insurance policy is the partial substitute — read exactly what it covers before treating it as one.