Skilling Broker Review

Regulation: CySEC currently regulates Skilling in Europe, and the Seychelles FSA regulated the company across the rest of the globe, including Indians. The FSA’s rules are not as strict as those of the FCA or CySEC, but it does allow Skilling to provide its clients with higher leverage.  

Safety Features: Although Indians will have little recourse should they enter a dispute with Skilling, the FSA does ensure that Skilling holds all client funds in segregated accounts at major European banks.  It also provides negative balance protection, which means that clients can never lose more than is in their trading accounts.  

The account-opening and verification process at Skilling is seamless and easy, and accounts are ready for trading immediately. 

All Indian residents are eligible to open an account at Skilling as long as they meet the following minimum deposit requirements:

• Standard Account: 100 EUR
• Premium Account: 5000 EUR
• MT4 Account: 100 EUR
• MT4 Premium Account: 5000 EUR

1. From the Skilling homepage, you will have to click on the ‘Sign Up’ tab, where you will be directed to register an account with an email address and password. Next, you will be asked for your name, date of birth, telephone number, country of residence, and street address.
2. The next step requires completing one’s financial information, including employment status, industry, annual income and savings, and source of funds.
3. Traders will then have to complete a form detailing their trading experience.  
4. Skilling requires the following documents to accept clients as individual traders:
   1. Proof of Identification – Skilling accepts all government-issued identification documents such as Passport, national ID card, driving license, or other government-issued ID. 
   2. Proof of Address – Proof of residence/address document must be issued in the account holder’s name within the last 6 months. It must contain a trader’s full name, current residential address, issue date, and issuing authority.
5. Traders can then deposit funds into their accounts and begin trading.  

Overall, Skilling’s account-opening process is fully digital and hassle-free, and accounts are ready for trading immediately.

Overall, Skilling offers a wider range of assets than is usually seen at other brokers. Notable is the number of Forex pairs and share CFDs available.

Skilling offers two commission-free accounts with trading costs included in the spreads and two accounts with tighter spreads and a commission per lot.  The commission-free accounts have lower minimum deposits than the commission-based accounts. 

Account Trading Costs:

We opened and tested Skilling’s trading accounts:

Premium Account: The Premium Account is a commission-based, raw spreads account, with spreads starting at 0.1 pips, but a 30 USD/10 lot trading commission charged. Leverage is also 500:1, but the minimum deposit is 5000 EUR, so this is probably not an account for beginner traders.  Trading is also offered on the Skilling Trader platform and cTrader.

MT4 Account: The MT4 Account requires a minimum deposit of 100 EUR, offers maximum leverage of 500:1, and as the name suggests, is only available on the MT4 platform.  Spreads start at 0.70 pips on the EUR/USD and no commissions are charged. 

MT4 Premium Account: This account is similar to the Premium account outlined above, but trading is only offered on the MT4 platform.  Leverage is up to 500:1, and spreads start at 0.1 pips with a commission of 30 USD/10 lots traded.  The minimum deposit on this account is also 5000 EUR. 

Skilling states that all Anti-Money Laundering rules and regulations are followed.  Deposits can only be made using a bank account or card registered in the trader’s name, and no third-party deposits are allowed.  Withdrawals must be made to the same account or method that the funds originated. 

Trading Account Currencies: Trading accounts can only be denominated in five base currencies – EUR, USD, NOK, SEK, and GBP, which is average compared to other brokers.   However, Skilling does not offer INR trading accounts, which is a disadvantage for Indian traders who will likely have bank accounts denominated in INR and who will have to pay currency conversion fees on deposits and withdrawals.  Skilling charges a currency conversion fee of 0.7% in addition to the fees that your banking institution will charge.

Deposits and Withdrawals: Skilling offers a range of deposit and withdrawal methods and charges no fees for either type of transaction. Remember that your bank or card issuer may charge you for international transfers.  Deposits are generally instant (except deposits via bank transfer and debit/credit cards), and withdrawals are processed within 24 – 48 hours.  Additionally, the minimum deposit amount is 100 USD, and the minimum withdrawal amount is 50 USD.

Deposits and withdrawals can be made via:

Skilling offers support for a good range of trading platforms, including the proprietary Skilling Trader, MT4, and cTrader. An industry first, Skilling has also completed seamless integration between Skilling Trader and cTrader, a unique feature dubbed One Account. Two Platforms. This allows traders to choose which platform they wish to use while having a single trading account with the same margin, same wallet, and same trading conditions.

Skilling Trader

Available on both Android and iOS devices, Skilling Trader has a great design.  It is easy to use and set up and has many features, including a Trading Assistant that walks you through the app. The app allows traders to easily transfer, withdraw, deposit funds, search for instruments, and create watchlists.  It also has a huge range of technical indicators and charts in multiple time frames and comes with various drawing tools. We also enjoyed how easy it was to execute orders, and all of Skilling’s educational materials and market news are available on the app.

Skilling cTrader

cTrader is an advanced trading platform designed specifically to work with market execution accounts. As mentioned previously, Skilling is unique in that it has teamed up with Spotware, cTrader’s creators, to seamlessly integrate cTrader with Skilling’s own trading platform.

The cTrader mobile app carries over most of the best parts from the desktop version, including the complete range of order types, price alerts, trade analysis, and symbol watchlists. Chart types have been reduced to 4, however.

MT4 Mobile App

We found that the MT4 app allows traders to work from anywhere, with nine timeframes, 30 indicators, and interactive currency charts. We were able to close and modify existing orders and calculate profit/loss in real-time. We also find it easier to search for instruments than on the web trader versions of the platforms.

Skilling Trader

Skilling Trader is Skilling’s proprietary trading platform. Designed to be intuitive and simple, but with a full suite of technical indicators and drawing tools, Skilling Trader is built to appeal to traders of all experience levels. With full integration with Skilling’s cTrader platform, web and mobile support, and a trade assistant for beginners, the Skilling Trader platform is flexible enough to satisfy most traders.

cTrader

cTrader is a modern, intuitive, and powerful trading platform with advanced trading capabilities, such as fast entry and coding customisation, as well as a variety of indicators to help you make better trading decisions. It includes a complete charting package, and Spotware hosts a library of indicators and robots, traders can also design their own algorithms using the Automate Editor.

Metatrader 4 (MT4)

Our review found that Skilling offers the standard version of MT4, which has 24 graphical objects and 30 built-in indicators. The main benefit of using third-party platforms such as MT4 is that traders can keep their own customised versions of the platforms should they choose to migrate to another broker. MT4 is available for Windows, Android, iOS, and web browsers.

Skilling offers support for a social trading platform (Skilling Copy) and PAMM/MAM accounts. 

Skilling Copy

Social trading is a service that allows investors to follow the trading strategy and copy the trades of professionals, which are also known as signal providers. On the Skilling cTrader Copy platform, traders can choose from over 1000 strategies and providers to follow and copy. The in-depth performance statistics available allow you to research Strategy Providers and their track record of investments and review their performance results and trading style to determine the most suitable strategy. 

Usually, the actions of experienced Forex traders are used as a guide for beginners. It reduces the time for market research and analytics before trading on Forex. Social trading is useful for traders without time for training or making independent investment decisions. 

PAMM/MAM Accounts

Skilling offers an account management service to its clients, allowing account managers to trade on their behalf.  Bespoke technology or software is required to perform this service, also known as MAM/PAMM.  The MAM software communicates all allocation settings directly with the Skilling MetaTrader 4 server.    

MAM stands for Multi-Account Manager, which permits a range of customisable ways to sub-allocate trades.  PAMM stands for Percentage Allocation Module Manager, which means investors can be part of a set of sub-accounts that are traded together by a money manager or trader who has permission from clients to trade on their accounts.  Account Managers take a portion of the profits generated by the trades.  

Managed accounts are great for beginner traders who have limited experience with trading.

Trading Tools Overview:

Skilling’s in-house team of analysts writes daily and weekly market analysis updates that are posted under its ‘Trading Articles’ tab.  While the content is of high quality, we would expect Skilling to provide analysis in various formats. 

However, we were pleased to see that Skilling also subscribes to Autochartist for some of its analysis because it is an excellent tool with an advanced pattern recognition engine that identifies the strongest potential trading opportunities and predicts future price movements.

Education is limited to a short section titled What is CFD Trading? This covers the basics of how contracts for difference function, with brief explanations of leverage, margin, and CFD costs.

Skilling’s own trading platform, Skilling Trader, also features the Skilling Trade Assistant – which is designed to explain the trading basics and help you place your first trade.

Education Overview:

Phone support is available from 08:00-17:00 CET, Monday to Friday, and live chat is available from 08:00-22:00 CET, Monday to Friday.

For the purposes of this review, we found the live chat agents responsive and knowledgeable.