Investous review – broker regulation, features, service and more

Good brokerages are created once in a while but the scam brokers are popping up like mushrooms after a rainy day. It is getting harder and harder to distinguish a trustworthy broker from the fraud ones. While the Forex industry has evolved so did the scam brokers that got professional in coating their shady business. Hence, it is more important today to investigate the broker thoroughly before you decide to open an account with them. Investous is one of those brokerages that has recently established and already claims to be one of the best brokers you can trade with. Investous FX brokerage is licensed in Belize, it provides four trading assets to its customers – Forex and CFDs on commodities, stocks and indices. The broker markets itself as an international brokerage, however, does not provide its service to the residents of the United States, European Economic Area, Canada, Switzerland and some other regions. Hence, if you are not a resident of mentioned regions make sure to read the detailed Investous review before you open an account with the broker.

Is investous legit broker?

Let’s get down to the business straight away. Investous is a company of the IOS Investments Limited which is registered and authorized in Belize, which is a famous place for the scam brokerages to register. The company has a license as a service provider for trading in securities. The license is granted by the International Financial Services Commission of Belize. The fact that the broker is regulated by the offshore regulator and provides the service only to the residents of the regions where there are no strict regulations or no regulations at all for the brokerages indicates that Investous fraud can be very possible.

It is interesting that there are no customer opinions about the Investous anywhere to be fund. Therefore the traders are not able to find out if the clients of the broker are satisfied with the service. The brokerage itself claims to be one of the best brokers that are currently operating in the FX industry. Investous indicates two awards from previous years, one for the best trading platform and another one for the best executive brokerage. I will leave it for you to decide how could the newly established broker get the award. But it must be mentioned that there is nowhere indicated which of the entities awarded Investous which makes us wonder can Investous be trusted? Each and every scam brokerage can claim to be the best and to have numerous awards.

Investous.com review

The website can say a lot about the broker. Investous website is a kind of website you can see a lot on the internet. It is made to look good with the sole purpose to urge the customers to open an account.  While the design might look modern and organized, since it is not overloaded, actually it is almost empty. It provides very little information about the broker and its services. It does not even provide enough information about the broker itself, only states that the broker is regulated, where it is located and what is the license number. It reduces Investous rating a lot since when the broker does not have a website that can be actually used by the customer it usually means that the broker does not really care about the customer experience.

The broker tries to create the impression that it provides education for the customers and visitors. You can find the education centre on its website where there are several blogs about the basics of Forex. In addition, the broker has a video library. At first, we were glad to see it, while making the Investous.com review but ended up being disappointed as the educational content is too short and does not provide knowledge to the trader. Both articles and videos are very short and not helpful for the beginner or advanced traders and give the impression that they are put there just for the sake of having them.

What does Investous offer to its clients

As mentioned above, the broker offers clients to trade instruments from four asset classes – currency pairs, CFDs on indices, CFDs on commodities, and CFDs on stocks. On the website, it is indicated that the broker offers 270 trading instruments from these classes. However, there is no list where one could find which currency pairs, stocks, commodities, or indices can be traded with Investous FX brokerage.

Account types

There are four account types that the broker is offering to its clients. The basic account, which can be considered to be for the beginner or low budget customers. It has the lowest minimum deposit – 250 USD but has some of the major disadvantages, for example, the pips there are from 2.3. The second one is a gold account where a trader needs to deposit 5000 USD. The broker also offers a platinum account with the minimum deposit of 10,000 USD and a VIP account where one needs to fund his account with 50, 000 USD. The way the basic account is created makes it hard for the less experienced or low budget traders to gain significant benefit. At the same time, the gold account comes with way better options than the basic one, it makes us think that the broker is encouraging the traders to open the gold account, which on the other hand can be the part of the Investous scam scheme.

Investous withdrawal

One of the ways to check if the broker is legit or fraud is to check the withdrawal policy. Usually, scam brokerages do not put the policy on the website or make it complicated so that it is almost impossible for the trader to withdraw the money. With Investous, both of the options are realized. There is no information about the withdrawal policy. Meaning that you cannot be aware of how to submit the request for withdrawal and how much time it will take. The absence of the withdrawal policy makes us think that we are dealing with Investous fraud. It is a classic scheme, you want to withdraw your money, the broker asks for numerous documents, claims they were either not valid or not enough, makes you wait for weeks and is hoping that you do not make it any more complicated. After all, when the broker is regulated by the offshore regulator you cannot really do much about the money you lost.

One thing that the broker says about the withdrawal is that there is a withdrawal commission. It varies depending on what payment methods you are using. It can be from 0.9 to 3.5 per cent if you are using E-wallet, 3.5 per cent if you are using a debit/credit card or the equivalent of 24 EUR if you are using wire transfer. It is enough to form a negative Investous opinion but there’s more. The broker will charge you an additional 50 EUR if you have an insignificant or no trading activity prior to submitting a withdrawal request. What does the prior mean? a day, a week or more? it is never mentioned. The money will be taken as well if you fail to provide the documents the broker might ask you time after time when you decide to withdraw your money.

Inactivity Fees

The list of the fees does not stop there. Like many other brokers, Infectious charges inactivity fee too. However, the period for inactivity is too low and the charges are too high. Your account will be charged 10 EUR after just one month of inactivity and as the longer, you will be inactive the more you will have to pay. The charges are as follows:

• 1 to 2 month – 10 EUR
• 2 to 3 month – 80 EUR
• 3 to 6 month – 120 EUR
• after 6 month – 200 EUR

With the above-mentioned withdrawal policy and such inactivity fees, it is not surprising that you cannot find any positive Investious opinions made by the customers.

Customer support

Investous customer support is definitely not something that the broker can be proud of. It is not an easy task to reach the broker and get assistance from it. The website shows the online chat, it would be convenient as with any other trustworthy broker to use, the problem is that the broker uses chatbot which is pretty much useless. It is not well programmed and does not help the trader in any way. The situation with the chatbot is pretty much the same as with the whole website – it is made to look good but does not serve any purpose which once again makes us think can Investous be trusted or not. Thankfully, one can still get to the live chat via the chatbot but the service there cannot be compared to the service of the average broker. Investous also has indicated the number of the customer support team on the website. When the broker claims to be international we automatically think that it should have the support centres in most of the major countries, Investous, on the other hand, has two numbers available, one is South African and the other is Russian. Overall, it is not easy to get professional assistance from the broker, which is a big minus and lowers Investous rating a lot.

Final thoughts

When the brokerage is relatively new, it’s hard to say how good it is, but one can definitely guess if it is fraud or not. Unfortunately, Investous is a broker that all the traders who care about their funds should stay away from. The broker claims to be among the best brokers but our investous.com review proves that if anything, it can be included in the list of the worst and scam brokerages. The broker clearly tries to register traders on the gold account, it charges high commissions on withdrawal and for inactivity. There is no clearly defined Investous withdrawal conditions which makes us think that their clients might not be possible to withdraw any money at all. After all, you can hardly find any positive feedback or opinions. Based on that we can safely state that the broker is not trustworthy and if you were considering to open account with it, we advise you to keep searching for the good brokers.