Abu Dhabi Global Market is a financial free zone in Abu Dhabi with its own courts, its own law and its own regulator, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority. It is not Dubai's DIFC, and it is not the onshore UAE, and that trips people up more than anything else about regulation here. A broker licensed in ADGM is not licensed by the DFSA or by the Capital Market Authority, and it does not need to be. Two of the brokers we review are licensed in ADGM, and what that licence actually gets you is very different depending on which one you pick.
What ADGM is, and how it differs from the DFSA and the CMA
ADGM sits on Al Maryah Island in Abu Dhabi. Like the DIFC it is a free zone with its own legal system, and like the DFSA the FSRA licenses and supervises the financial firms inside it. The practical distinction for a reader is jurisdictional: an FSRA permission covers activity carried on in or from ADGM, and the courts that would hear a dispute are ADGM courts.
The onshore Capital Market Authority, the Securities and Commodities Authority's legal successor since 1 January 2026, is a different thing again: it regulates mainland UAE, outside both free zones.
None of the three is inherently stronger. What differs is what each firm is permitted to do, and that is set per firm rather than per regulator.
I write about ADGM partly because I spend time there. I went to Abu Dhabi Finance Week, which ADGM puts on, as a full-week delegate in 2023 and again in 2025, out on Al Maryah Island where the free zone and the firms it licenses actually sit.
Among the people I met there were eToro's GCC regional manager, HSBC's digital wealth products manager and Wio's head of strategic partnerships. Their cards are below, shared with their permission. None of that makes me an insider and none of it changes a word of what follows: the licence checks in this guide come off the register, not out of a conversation at a conference.
Read the permission, not the regulator
An FSRA licence is a Financial Services Permission, an FSP, and it carries a number and a list of permitted activities. The list is the substance, because two ADGM firms can hold FSPs and be permitted to do quite different things.
The two ADGM firms in our comparison show the range, and we checked both on the register rather than taking either firm's word for it.
We looked up eToro (ME) Ltd on the ADGM FSRA public register and captured the entry on 17 August 2026. It shows FSP 220073, licensed on 16 October 2023, status Active, registered at Al Sila Tower on Al Maryah Island, with five permitted activities including dealing as principal on a matched basis, arranging, managing assets and providing custody. Because Providing Custody is among them, the UAE entity can hold client investments itself. The entry is below, so you can compare it against what you see when you check it yourself.
We looked up Sarwa Digital Wealth (Capital) Limited on the same register and captured that entry too. FSP 190037, dated 20 February 2020, registered at Al Khatem Tower on Abu Dhabi Global Market Square. It lists Managing Assets, Advising and Arranging Deals. It does not list a Dealing in Investments permission or a Providing Custody permission, and Sarwa Trade securities are custodied at Alpaca Securities LLC in the United States. Both entries are below.
Those two positions are not equivalent, and the difference is not visible from the words "regulated by the FSRA in ADGM", which both firms can accurately say.
How to check an ADGM licence yourself
The FSRA publishes a public register of financial firms. You can look a firm up by name or by FSP number and see its permitted activities and its status. Every licence detail on this page was read off that register rather than off a broker's marketing page, and registers change, so treat our capture dates as the point at which what we describe was true.
- Check the legal entity name, not the brand. You contract with a company, not a logo.
- Read the permitted activities, and look specifically for Dealing in Investments and Providing Custody. Their absence tells you the firm arranges rather than executes, or that your assets sit elsewhere.
- Check the status is active, and note the FSP number so you can cite it later.
One limitation is worth knowing before you rely on it: ADGM does not publish client-asset endorsements. Where a firm states it holds a particular client-money or client-asset classification, the register will not confirm it either way, so we treat such statements as the firm's own claim rather than as verified fact.
What an ADGM licence does not give you
There is no investor compensation scheme. Neither ADGM nor the wider UAE operates one, and an FSRA licence does not create one. If a firm fails, there is no fund that makes retail clients whole.
This is the most misread part of UAE regulation. A licence is supervision and conduct rules. It is not a guarantee and it is not deposit insurance. Where protection exists for a UAE client it usually sits abroad and attaches to wherever the assets are actually custodied, which is why the custody question matters more than the licence badge.
The FSRA does enforce
A regulator that never acts is worth less than one that does, so enforcement history is information rather than simply a warning.
The FSRA has taken four enforcement actions against Sarwa Digital Wealth (Capital) Limited since 2022, all of them listed on the Regulatory Actions tab of its register entry, which we read on 20 August 2026. Three fall under the Common Reporting Standard and FATCA regulations, and they are three separate actions rather than one: a penalty in July 2022 for breaching the CRS requirements; a penalty in January 2024 because the tax identification numbers for 137 reportable accounts were not accurately reported, so the CRS return was not complete or accurate; and a penalty in May 2025, part of an exercise the FSRA announced on 26 May 2025 covering 23 entities and AED 610,000 of penalties in total, with no per-entity split published. The fourth, on 21 May 2024, was a fine of USD 122,500 for offering securities in its own parent company without an approved prospectus.
Read these for what they are. Three concern tax-reporting mechanics rather than client money, and the fourth concerns a securities offering. None is a finding that client assets were lost. What they do show is a regulator that inspects and penalises, on a public record a prospective client can check.
What to do before you deposit
Treat "UAE regulated" as the beginning of a question rather than an answer. ADGM, the DIFC and onshore are three regimes, and the differences that matter to you sit in the permissions rather than in the marketing.
- Find the legal entity named in your client agreement, and check it against the FSRA register by FSP number.
- Read the permitted activities. If Providing Custody is absent, ask where your assets are held and under whose rules.
- Assume no compensation scheme, and ask what happens to your assets if the firm fails. Get the answer in writing.
