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Main » IG Review
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IG Review Australia & Test 2024: Is IG safe or scam?

Bonds
CFD
CFD Crypto
IG
Favicon
4.4/5
  • Trusted provider since 1974
  • Huge choice of global bond markets
  • Receive coupon payments as dividends
Go to IG
Australia
Customers from Australia accepted
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved.
IG
Favicon
4.4/5
Minimum Deposit
0.00€
Deposit Protection
£50,000.00
Trading Costs
from 0.50%
Mini Contracts
Yes
Go to IG
Australia
Customers from Australia accepted
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved.
IG
Favicon
4.5/5
Minimum Deposit
-
Deposit Protection
-
Amount of Currencies
-
BTC/USD Spread
-
Go to IG
Australia
Customers from Australia accepted
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved.
Details
User Reviews

Welcome to our IG Review here at Wetten.com, where we’ll tell you all about how Australia’s No.1 CFD and Forex trader lives up to its reputation in our experts’ opinion and IG rating.

With Over 20,000 CFDs to trade, a multitude of forex pairs and access to global stock markets, including Wall Street and Europe, for Australian customers, it leaves little wonder why we’ve rated this broker so highly. In addition, we’ll tell you all about why IG has one of the best trust scores on our site!

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Pros & Cons of IG
  • Excellent trading platform for both beginner and experienced traders
  • Regulated and incensed in multiple countries
  • Offers MT4 as well as their own in house platform
  • Great deposit and withdrawal options
  • High fees for forex and CFDs
License
ASIC - Australian Securities and Investments Commission
Company
IG Group Holdings Plc.
Founded
2001
Website
ig.com
Email
info@ig.com
Phone
+ 44 20 78960011
Overall Rating
4.4/5
  • Usability, Look & Feel
    4.6/5
  • Payment Methods
    4.6/5
  • Customer Service
    4.2/5
No review posted yet.
User Rating
0/5
5 Stars
0%
4 Stars
0%
3 Stars
0%
2 Stars
0%
1 Star
0%
Last Updated on 11/03/2024
Fact checked by: Kane Gregan

IG Review - Usability, Look and Feel of The Site

When you land on the IG website, you’ll notice that it has a bright and professional feel, with a white and red colour scheme. The landing page and site as a whole is informative and offers plenty of information without appearing to be too busy. We’re pleased to say that this theme is carried on into the web trading platform – which we have to say is excellent!

IG
4.4/5
IG Bonds
Go to IG
IG Highlights
  • Trusted provider since 1974
  • Huge choice of global bond markets
  • Receive coupon payments as dividends
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved.

The IG Trading Platform

We should point out that IG also offers you the option to download the third part MT4 desktop trader. However this trader is commonly used by a multitude of other trading sites globally and has already been widely reviewed – see our ASX Review for details. Therefore, we decided to focus this section of our IG review on their homegrown trading platform.

There’s a good reason behind our decision too – the IG trading platform is excellent, dare we say it, the best we’ve seen. The overall design is near-flawless, leaving you with a platform that is user-intuitive for traders and investors of all experience levels. The platform is extremely flexible and easily customisable, meaning you can add and take away features to leave your screen as busy, or as minimalist as your trading level requires.

IG Review Australia – A Trading Guide

Learn

If you already have experience in CFD, forex and/or ETFs trading then you can, of course skip this step and go straight to step two of our IG review. Especially if it’s CFD and forex trading you’re going for, learning about how they work and the risks involved is key before you go ahead, sign up and start risking your real money. IG offers demo accounts so you can practice trading on the platform with virtual money before creating a real money account.

Register

Once you’re confident of your knowledge and use of the demo account, you can then register your IG account and make your first real money deposit. Once your account details have been fully verified you can make your first payment via credit/debit card, BPAY or PayPal.

Plan

You don’t just dive in two footed and start trading, especially when it comes to CFDs. You should create a simple plan for your trading activity that includes your goals, motivation, budget and time management among other things. You can make the plan yourself or do so using IG’s own help tools.

Platform

When it comes to trading with the IG, you can choose to use the web based trading platform the third party MT4 trader, the mobile trading app and the advanced platform. As mentioned earlier in this IG Review Australia, the in house web trader is excellent – and so that would be our recommendation for beginner to intermediate traders at the very least.

Deal

Once all of the aforementioned steps have been taken the real fun begins, as you’re ready to start trading for real. Once you’ve spotted an opportunity you can now open, monitor and close your first position. You can make use of the peer-to-peer discussion and the customer service to assist you with your trades.

IG Review Australia - Payments

For deposits of up to $50,000, you can use your credit/debit card, BPAY or PayPal, for larger deposits you can fund your account via wire transfer – which naturally will take longer to process. To deposit using the IG web trader, simply log into your account on your phone or desktop computer, head to My IG and click “add funds”. You can then select your preferred payment method and fire away. The minimum required deposit is $450 and there are no deposit fees charged.

Withdrawing Funds from your IG Australia Account

Similarly, withdrawing funds from your IG account is a fairly simple process and, once again, no fees are charged. To transfer funds back into your bank account, log into My IG, click on the “live accounts” tab and subsequently “withdraw funds” to send your withdrawal request to IG. In other good news, withdrawals are usually processed within 24 hours, or even the same day if you send your request prior to midday. If you’re using your bank card, it could take between two and five days to put the funds physically in your account.

Customer Service - 24/7 Availability with IG

The IG customer service team can be contacted 24/7…almost. Between 9am and 7pm (AEDT), they are offline and uncontactable – but of a setback for a broker that offers weekend trading. There is, however, peer support through a discussion page on the IG site which does sometimes have IG staff online as well as your fellow traders.

The phone support is probably your best bet if you want fairly quick and helpful answers from an Australian-based customer service agent. When testing the phone line for our IG Review Australia, the longest we had to wait in order to get connected was 10-15 minutes. The email service is alright as far as email services go, but is naturally the slowest port of contact.

There is a live chat, but it really isn’t easy to find, and you won’t find it through the IG Australia website at all – it’s on the UK one. You can use the live chat from Australia but just be aware that it is sometimes offline as it’s located on the other side of the world.

License and Security - Is IG Safe?

When it comes to licensing and regulation, we were overall very pleased with the results when conducting our research for this IG review. IG is regulated in no less than 11 jurisdictions, including six tier 1 – which includes the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). We can therefore give IG a high trust score and confidently say there is no evidence of an internal IG scam having ever taken place in its history – which spans back to 1974.

ASIC - Australian Securities and Investments Commission
FCA - Financial Conduct Authority
CFTC - Commodity Futures Trading Commission
MAS - Monetary Authority of Singapore
JFSA - Financial Service Agency (Japan)
+ 3

Safety and Protection

When it comes to your actual account safety and protection, you can set up two factor authentication by downloading the IG authentication app. This further protects your account from being hacked. The bad news is that, for Australian clients, there is no investor protection from the legal entity of governmental regulatory bodies.

As is usually the case, only residents in the UK, EU and Switzerland are afforded such a luxury. We wouldn’t let this worry you too much though, as IG has been around since 1974 and has survived all of the financial crises that have happened between then and now.

IG Australia Reputation and Customer Feedback

As you would most likely expect from a trading and financial services company that started in 1974 and is still going, IG enjoys a strong reputation at industry level. When it comes to their customer reputation, IG customer ratings in terms of trust have consistently scored extremely high, as we reinforced in our review here.

Where they fall short in the eyes of their customers is with the customer service. We should point out that this isn’t a consistent problem and isn’t on going. The customer service is, generally satisfactory, it’s just the response times have varied over the past few years, and the live chat service is definitely under par. We do hold out strong hopes for improvements in this area.

IG
4.4/5
IG Bonds
Go to IG
IG Highlights
  • Trusted provider since 1974
  • Huge choice of global bond markets
  • Receive coupon payments as dividends
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved.
IG Bonds

Trading Bonds

You’ll have the opportunity to choose from a list of global governments bonds on the IG trading platform. As an IG trader, you’ll be able to trade bond ETFs and can even invest in a fraction of a contract as all contracts are off-exchange.

IG CFD

Trading CFDs

IG is well-known for the CFD trading capabilities. With access to over 17,000 markets, CFD will allow you to contracts for difference in a number of different markets such as stocks, commodities, forex, and more. However, there are far more markets to trade CFDs in and we urge you to visit the official website to find out more.

IG Crypto

Our IG Ranking: Cryptocurrencies Trading at IG Australia

With IG Australia, you can trade up to ten different cryptocurrency coins as CFDs, meaning that you can’t actually trade them through ownership of the underlying asset – or in other words, you can’t buy crypto with IG. If you are looking to buy bitcoin and take ownership of the underlying asset, we recommend checking out Tradestation Australia.

However, we should point out that you shouldn’t be put off by the lack of physical cryptos with IG, as CFDs do offer their advantages. For starters, the fact that you’re not holding onto the asset means that you’re not at any risk from hackers. Given that very few traders actually use bitcoin as their transnational currency, you might find that there’s very little need to hold onto the asset.

CFDs vs Physical Crypto Assets

Furthermore CFDs are somewhat regulated financial products, whereas cryptocurrencies are all decentralised and not backed by any international bank. This makes actual crypto assets extremely volatile, which can mean that their value could spike sharply, but it could also fall in the same manner.

On that note, we should also point out that CFDs themselves are risky and it is possible to lose more money that you have deposited into your account. Therefore, this isn’t the most advisable trading avenue for beginner traders, and requires a lot of research and homework to understand the risks involved.

Fees and Costs with IG Australia

There are two very different sides to the tale here – on the one hand, you have the non-trading fees, which are mostly non existent and are low when you do find them. On the other hand, the trading fees for CFDs and forex sit in the average-to-high bracket. However the fees shouldn’t worry you too much as they are more than matched by the overall quality of the trading platform and market access provided.

Non-Trading Fees 

First of all, let’s start with the undoubted positives – there are no fees charged by IG for deposits and withdrawals made into your account. We should point out that your bank or payment provided may charge fees from their end, so check this in advance. Technically, there is an account inactivity fee, but they only start charging you after two years of inactivity at the rate of $12 per month.

IG Review – Trading Fees

The trading fees for CFDs are built into the spread, with the average changing between peak and non peak times. For some indices, such as the S&P 500 and the Europe 50 are quite low compared to their nearest competitors, however with some others they are average and even high – as is the case with the EURUSD. Overall, the CFD fees are average, however the forex fees are definitely on the high side in comparison with other similar trading platforms in Australia today. WIth stocks and ETFs, the commission per trade is 0.10% for Australian clients with a minimum fee of $10(AUD).

IG Review - Jurisdiction and Limits

Like many online trading platforms today, IG’s jurisdiction stretches far and wide across the globe, covering most of the western world and parts of Asia. However, the range of markets available to you does depend on where you are trading from and which IG entity that you choose. Fortunately, alongside the UK and Germany, Australia has full access to all of the markets and services available with IG, which includes real stocks and ETFs.

Most other countries can only trade in CFDs forex and options on the IG trading platform. In this IG review Australia takes center stage naturally, and we’re happy to report that the site perhaps excels in Australia more than anywhere else within their jurisdiction – despite being a British company originally. The site is currently the number one in Australia for forex and CFDs trading in 2024.

Other Trading With IG Australia

IG users from a handful of countries have access to exchange traded securities on international stock exchanges – this is in addition to the 20,000 CFDs available to trade on the platform. When it comes to stock indices, IG is the only online broker in Australia to offer weekend trading on certain key indices, with some 24 hour indices also available.

All in all, you get approximately 30 more available trading hours per week with IG than you do with their nearest competitors, including Blueberry Markets Australia and Oanda (see our Oanda Review here). This undoubtedly gives you trading advantages when using IG as you can open or edit your positions when users of other platforms don’t have market access. The available indices include the FTSE 100, Germany 30, US 500 and Wall Street.

Forex Trading

Alongside CFDs forex trading also takes center stage with IG, as it claims to be “Australia’s No1 Forex Provider”. This is true in terms of pairs offered, platform quality and support, however the quality of the service does come at something of a premium. Forex fees are higher than those found in our FXCM Review and with AvaTrade Australia. If you are completely new to forex or CFD trading, then you can make use of the excellent demo account to get some practice in.

IG ETF

Trading ETFs

With IG trading, you’ll find a sufficient list of exchange traded funds (ETFs) that are on offer. From stock index ETFs to currency ETFs and a range of sector and industry ETFs. It’s all on offer with IG.

IG Forex

Trading Forex

It is possible to trade in over 80 forex pairs including major, minor, and exotic pairs. You will find a range of the most popular forex markets and the trading tools needed to take advantage of changes in these markets with maximum efficiency.

IG Stocks

Trading Stocks

You can engage in stock trading on the IG platform commission-free. This applies to US and UK stocks while Australian stocks will incur a slight commission fee. However, with the ample selection of stocks on offer, you’ll find more than enough international stocks from the US, UK, Ireland, and Germany.

IG Review FAQ

✅ Is IG a good broker?

IG is a British financial company that has been around since 1974, so surely they must be doing something right don’t you think. IG themselves claim to be the No.1 in Australia for CFD and forex trading, but we wanted to find evidence of that and put it to the test. You can find the results here in the Wetten.com IG Review.

💵 Is my money safe with IG?

IG has been around since 1974 and has a strong track record, having survived all of the financial rock patches that have happened between 1974 and 2024. However it is a platform that also specialises in CFDs and Forex trading, which are quite risky. You can find out more about these in the  forex trading guide here at Wetten.com Finance.

📈 Is IG only for CFD?

IG is known as being “Australia’s best for CFD trading” – at least in their own words anyway. But is that really the be all and end all of this trading platform that has been around since 1074? We explored more of the trading options available with IG in Australia here at Wetten.com Finance.

IG Review Australia - Our Verdict

Overall, IG Australia is one of the best trading platforms in this country, however it’s not without its flaws. Overall though, we have to say that the excellent in-house trading platform, the high testability score and amount of tradable assets for Australian customers do enough to counterbalance the sometimes high fees and customer service that’s definitely in some need of improvement.

Please note:

Spread bets and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage.  69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how spread bets and CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money

IG
4.4/5
Rating
Go to IG
Highlights
  • Trusted provider since 1974
  • Huge choice of global bond markets
  • Receive coupon payments as dividends
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved.

User Reviews for IG

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Bonds
CFD
CFD Crypto
IG
Favicon
4.4/5
  • Trusted provider since 1974
  • Huge choice of global bond markets
  • Receive coupon payments as dividends
Go to IG
Australia
Customers from Australia accepted
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved.
IG
Favicon
4.4/5
  • Negative balance protection on CFDs
  • Mobile app for CFD trades on the go
  • 17,000+ markets available
Go to IG
Australia
Customers from Australia accepted
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved.
IG
Favicon
4.5/5
  • Great for all levels of trading experience
  • Plenty of deposit options available
  • A good choice of crypto CFDs
Go to IG
Australia
Customers from Australia accepted
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved.
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