IG: widest range of assets, with a South African entity in Johannesburg? My 2026 review

South Africa's market conduct regulator is the FSCA, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, which licenses brokers as Financial Services Providers (FSPs) under the FAIS Act. IG's position on that map deserves stating precisely rather than generously. The South African entity with a Johannesburg presence is a genuine local footprint, but residents here are served under international tier-1 licences: the FCA in the United Kingdom, ASIC in Australia and the MAS in Singapore, with the wider group also holding a BaFin licence in Germany. IG holds no FSP licence from the FSCA under the FAIS Act, so read the Johannesburg presence as proximity rather than local authorisation, and confirm the contracting entity in your onboarding paperwork before you fund. If an FSCA-licensed counterparty is your deciding criterion, two brokers in our local ranking hold one: Avatrade, through Ava Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd, and Vantage. IG's assurance is of a different kind: trading since 1974 and listed on the London Stock Exchange, it publishes audited accounts and meets disclosure standards unlisted brokers never face. Client funds sit in segregated accounts, negative balance protection applies on leveraged products for retail clients, and two-factor authentication is available. Retail protections such as the leverage cap (up to 1:30 in many jurisdictions) are set by the entity that opens your account, so the paperwork, not the marketing, tells you what applies.

Start with the money leaving your South African bank account. Accounts are usually funded in US dollars, and the rand floats freely against the dollar, so conversion is both a cost and a variable: the spread your bank charges on each rand-to-dollar transfer, and whatever rate you get on the day. On a monthly purchase programme that quiet ZAR-to-USD line compounds as surely as the fees you can see. IG itself charges nothing on deposits, withdrawals are free, and an idle account is closed after two years rather than charged an inactivity fee.

On the derivatives desk the cost lives in the spread, and IG's grid is competitive on the markets a South African trader is most likely to touch: EUR/USD from 0.6 pip, GBP/USD from 0.9 pip, the FTSE 100, Wall Street (US 30) and Germany 40 from 1 point, spot gold from 0.3 point, and share derivatives from 0.05%. Good, but not the cheapest available locally: Pepperstone tops our South Africa ranking on spreads from 0.0 pips and execution speed, and Eightcap is one of the lowest-cost brokers we track here. IG competes on depth and tools rather than the last fraction of a pip.

The investing side is where a South African portfolio gains most. Cash shares and ETFs trade at 0 commission with a per-order minimum of $5 in Europe and $15 in the US, there are no ETF fees, and the securities account converts currency at zero: once you have moved rand into dollars at your bank, no further FX drag applies to overseas purchases. The per-order minimum is the flip side, since $15 on a US trade is a heavy percentage of a small monthly ticket in rand, so larger and less frequent purchases fit this pricing better. Uninvested cash earns 4.5%, ahead of Avatrade's 3% and Bitpanda's 2.25% locally.

Then tax, which in South Africa is no rounding error. For an individual investor, SARS deducts the annual exclusion of R40,000 of gains per tax year, then includes 40% of the remaining net gain in your taxable income at your marginal rate (up to 45%), an effective maximum of about 18%. Trading is treated differently: CFD profits are usually treated as revenue and taxed as ordinary income, and the same trader-versus-investor question decides how crypto gains are treated. Nothing is withheld at source, so you declare disposals on your annual SARS return and the tax is assessed there, which is why a full CSV export of your trades is worth keeping from the first order. Dividends from South African companies carry a separate 20% Dividends Withholding Tax, and foreign markets may withhold on dividends at source, which is separate from CGT. A Tax-Free Savings Account (R36,000 a year, R500,000 lifetime) shelters returns entirely and is worth filling before a taxable account for long-term holdings, but it is a South African wrapper: ask IG whether the Johannesburg entity can host one rather than assuming an international account will. Not tax advice: consult a registered SARS tax practitioner.

The catalogue is the reason IG is on this page: the local offer is quoted at more than 17,000 tradable markets. Two perimeters sit behind that headline and they overlap, so they should not be added up: the derivatives desk counts 16,000+ markets, and the securities account deals around 6,000 shares and 2,000+ ETFs in cash, with the same names often tradable on either side. Add vanilla and barrier options, roughly a hundred futures and some thirty cryptos as derivatives. Options and futures are the genuine rarity for a South African reader: almost none of the other brokers we rank locally offer them, and they open hedging strategies plain CFDs cannot replicate.

For an offshore ETF allocation this is the strongest catalogue in our local comparison, which is why IG heads our South Africa ETF ranking: the range runs well beyond the headline world indices into emerging market, sector, bond and thematic funds, all in real ownership, with no ETF fees and zero currency conversion. Among the brokers we rank here, Avatrade and Vantage give index exposure only through leveraged CFDs, a different product with a different risk profile, while Bitpanda's fractional real ETFs suit very small recurring purchases better.

Two limits are worth stating plainly. The catalogue we document is built around international markets, with per-order minimums quoted for Europe and the US and no JSE-listed shares in it, so if Johannesburg-listed equities are part of your plan, confirm availability with IG before you fund. And crypto exists only as derivatives, around 33 pairs with no wallet, which matters more here since October 2022, when the FSCA declared crypto assets a financial product under the FAIS Act and brought Crypto Asset Service Providers into the FSP licensing regime. IG sits fourth in our South Africa crypto ranking, and an investor who wants to hold and move actual coins should look instead at Nexo, Uphold or Binance, registered as a Digital Asset Service Provider. The platforms, IG's web and mobile apps, ProRealTime (free from four trades a month), MetaTrader 4, TradingView and L2 Dealer, can all be rehearsed on the demo first.

For a South African investor the case for IG is breadth backed by substance. No other broker in our local comparison puts 17,000+ markets, options, futures, direct market access and a real securities account behind one login, or pairs that with a London listing and a South African entity in Johannesburg. Rated 4.6/5, it is sixth of seven in our broker hub, where Pepperstone and Eightcap lead on cost, but first in our South Africa ETF ranking, and that split is the honest summary: this is the account for an experienced trader who wants every market in one place, and for an investor building an offshore ETF portfolio in real ownership with no ETF fees and 4.5% on idle cash. The reservations are equally clear. IG holds no FSP licence from the FSCA under the FAIS Act, so a reader who wants a locally licensed counterparty should weigh Avatrade, FSCA-authorised through Ava Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd, or Vantage, also FSCA-regulated. Accounts are funded in US dollars while you earn in rand, and a floating currency plus per-order minimums of $5 and $15 make small, frequent purchases expensive here. On tax, SARS includes 40% of a net capital gain in taxable income after the R40,000 annual exclusion, an effective maximum of about 18%, while CFD profits are usually taxed as ordinary income; ask a registered SARS tax practitioner rather than us. And leveraged trading carries a high risk of loss whatever the licence behind the platform.