How to Check a Company’s Reliability Using the NSSMC’s Registers

Investor should make Resolutions based on facts, not promises. Therefore, the first thing worth checking before making any investment is whether the company has the right to operate in the capital markets. A NSSMC license confirms that its activities comply with legal requirements and are subject to state supervision. This can be verified within a few minutes using official registers.

In the previous material, we explained why a NSSMC license is one of the main criteria of a company’s reliability. This time, we will show how to verify it using public registers and what details are worth paying attention to before entrusting the company with your money.

Step 1. Checking the official register

Information about the license should be searched for exclusively on the NSSMC’s official website – nssmc.gov.ua, in particular, the Register of Professional Participants of Capital Markets and Organized Commodity Markets and the CII Register. This is an official state database containing information about all collective investment institutions (unit and corporate investment funds).

Fraudsters often generate fake “certificates” and post them on their websites, so a document displayed on the company’s own webpage cannot be trusted.

The regulator’s website contains a complete list of licensed capital market participants in the registers section. You can search either by the company’s name or by its USRCOU code (an eight-digit numerical code that every legal entity is required to indicate in its details).

Step 2. Verify the Type of Activity

Once you have found the company in the register, check exactly which services it is licensed to provide. A license is issued for a specific type of professional activity in the capital markets. Therefore, it is important that the services offered to you correspond to those for which the company has obtained authorization.

For example, if a company offers to buy or sell stocks or bonds on your behalf, it must have a license for brokerage activities. If it offers to manage your investments, it must have a license for asset management/financial instrument portfolio management.

The services offered to you must correspond to the types of activities specified in the register. If a company advertises services for which it does not have a license, this is a reason to refrain from transferring money until you receive comprehensive explanations.

Step 3. Check the Website and Accounts

One of the most common tricks used by pseudo-brokers is to mimic a real licensed company. Fraudsters create a clone website with a similar name and claim that they operate on behalf of a legitimate market participant. Therefore, when checking the company in the NSSMC’s register, be sure to verify:

1. The company’s official website – the register specifies the exact domain address of the licensee. If the website through which you are being offered services differs by even one letter or has a different domain address, this is a serious reason to refuse to transfer money and conduct an additional check;
2. Banking details – a legitimate company accepts funds only into its own bank accounts, not onto individuals’ bank cards, electronic wallets, or crypto wallets;
3. Contact details – if the phone number, email address, or other contact details through which you are communicating do not match the company’s officially published information, you should treat such an offer with particular caution.

Step 4. List of Suspicious Projects

In addition to the register of licensed capital market participants, the NSSMC continuously maintains and updates the “Investor Protection” section, where it publishes a list of suspicious investment projects and pseudo-brokers.

If a company is not listed in the register of licensees, this is already sufficient reason not to entrust it with your money. At the same time, it is worth checking whether it has been included in the list of suspicious investment projects. If so, this is an additional signal of a high risk of losing your funds.

What else should you pay attention to?

Even if the company turns out to be licensed, remember: no legitimate market participant can guarantee you high returns or pressure you to make a decision quickly. Persistent calls from “financial consultants,” requests to install remote access programs (such as AnyDesk or TeamViewer), or urging you to transfer money right now are signs of manipulation that have nothing to do with the professional market. We covered this in more detail in the text “How the Commission Protects Ukrainians from Pseudo-Investment Projects.”

The more people get used to checking a company before entrusting it with their money, the harder it becomes for fraudulent schemes to find new victims, and the more trust in the legal capital market grows. For a market that is only beginning to develop in Ukraine, this is no less important than it is for an individual investor.

In the next article, we will explain what rights an investor has, what information a company is required to provide before entering into an agreement, and what you should pay attention to before investing your money.