Saxo Bank Review: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Platform

4.9/5

Regulated broker

Wide variety of trading products

Protection for users’ funds

OPEN ACCOUNT *Risk is involved with all trading actions

Introduction

Saxo Bank is a Denmark-based investment bank that provides users with brokerage services. 

Analyzing the top brokers currently operating in the market can help traders and investors make informed decisions when it comes to investing in a safe, regulated environment, to keep your funds safe and, at the same time, evaluate the features of each broker to decide which one better fits your needs. 

In this article, we will cover the characteristics of Saxo Bank, including fees, financial products offered, the features of the trading platform and the company’s background.

Saxo Bank Background and Company Information

Saxo Bank was founded in 1992 as a brokerage firm. Its headquarters are in Copenhagen. In the beginning, the name was Midas Fondsmæglerselskab. Its founders are Kim Fournais, who is still the CEO of the company, Lars Seier Christensen, and Marc Hauschildt. 

In 1998, the company joined the digital world by launching its first digital platform, also allowing private investors to invest in the financial trading products offered by the broker. 

In 2001, the company changed its name to Saxo Bank and partnered with the Portuguese Banco Carregosa, which wanted to benefit from Saxo’s tech expertise. They managed to create a win-win cooperation, and Saxo’s first international expansion. 

Saxo then began to focus on international partnerships and tech developments. The bank opened new branches around the world – Italy, Singapore, London. The banking license it obtained from the Danish authority finally marked its entry into the banking sector. 

The Danish FSA now regulates Saxo Bank – the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority – along with Saxo Bank Italia, Saxo Bank Czech Republic and Saxo Bank Netherlands. 

The funds of Saxo’s clients are protected by its membership in the Danish Guarantee Fund up to €100,000.

Moreover, Saxo bank is regulated by the FCA (the UK Financial Conduct Authority) and the SFBC (the Swiss Federal Banking Commission).   

User Interface and User Experience

Saxo Bank offers different platforms and tools to allow users to trade and invest in financial products.

It offers: 

• SaxoTraderGO,
• SaxoTraderPRO,
• Partner platforms, 
• API – Application Programming Interface – access points. 

Saxo Bank uses a mix of proprietary technology and third parties to deliver results. 

SaxoTraderGO is the most intuitive alternative offered by Saxo Bank. It presents all the basic features needed by traders and investors to check their investments on the go – in fact, the platform is also available on mobile devices, both Android and iOS. 

Here, users can find three sections: the trading platform, an account overview, and the research section. 

The latter shows all the products available, along with financial news and calendars. The account overview allows users to check transfers and payment methods. 

The trading platform is customizable, and lets users see price charts, an overview of the chosen financial product, and bid and ask prices. From here, users can check open positions, set screeners and alerts. 

SaxoTraderPRO represents the more advanced trading platform offered by Saxo Bank. It’s also available in a downloadable version. This platform allows traders and investors to use over 50 tools to analyze price charts, algo trading, and to customize the platform across up to six screens.

Third parties, like TradingView, allow Saxo’s users to further customize their trading experience with the broker. APIs – Application Programming Interfaces – are offered both by Saxo and its partners to allow users to gather data, make trades and check portfolios by using the interfaces offered by the broker. 

The broker serves both beginners and experienced traders. In general, its design makes trading accurate and fast.

Trading and Investment Options

Saxo Bank offers financial products that allow margin trading: 

• Stocks,
• ETFs – Exchange Traded Funds,
• Bonds,
• Mutual Funds,
• Crypto ETPs – Exchange Traded Products, that is, derivative products based on cryptocurrencies. 

Among the other leveraged products it offers are: 

• Options, 
• Futures,
• Forex,
• Forex options, 
• Cryptocurrencies,
• CFDs – Contracts for Differences,
• Commodities. 

The broker also offers managed portfolios, giving users the support of experts to manage their funds and choose the investments that fit their needs according to market conditions. 

To trade all these products, Saxo offers competitive fees to traders and investors. They range from $1 to $1.25. The broker charges 0.05% on bonds, but it charges $0 fees for mutual funds. 

The variety of products offered by the broker is not only measured by the number of products available, but also by the available markets. 

Concerning stocks, Saxo Bank offers over 20,000 globally, including emerging markets. 

US ETFs are offered from dozens of exchanges. There are over 3,000 options listed across different markets, like energy and metals, offered from 20 exchanges around the world. 

Saxo Bank also offers over 300 futures across different markets.

The broker also offers crypto trading through the Crypto FX service. There are nine crypto/fiat pairs available: BTCUSD, ETHUSD, LTCUSD, BTCEUR, ETHEUR, LTCEUR, BTCJPY, ETHJPY, LTCJPY. 

Crypto Trading

When it comes to cryptocurrencies, Saxo Bank offers different financial products that involve digital assets. 

Along with the crypto/fiat pairs mentioned above, which are provided by the Crypto FX service, which allows margin trading, the broker offers derivatives based on cryptos. 

These derivatives fall in the category of ETPs – exchange traded products, which don’t need any crypto wallet to be traded.  

This category includes Saxo’s Crypto ETFs and Crypto ETNs. 

Crypto ETFs are exchange traded funds composed by a basket of cryptocurrencies. The cryptocurrencies involved in this type of product are Bitcoin (BTC), Stellar (XLM), Solana (SOL), Tezos (XTZ), Litecoin (LTC), Avalanche (AVAX), Terra (UST), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether (ETH), Polkadot (DOT), Ripple (XRP), Cardano (ADA), Tron (TRX), Polygon (MATIC), and Algorand (ALGO).

The Crypto ETNs offered by Saxo Bank involve Bitcoin and Ether. Crypto Exchange Traded Notes are derivatives that work like index trackers and are traded on major exchanges. 

Compared to other online brokers, Saxo Bank doesn’t offer a high number of cryptocurrencies for trading, and it doesn’t offer crypto pairs, but at the same time, this broker provides more sophisticated financial instruments based on digital assets. This allows users interested in this type of asset to get exposure to the crypto space without the need to own a wallet or know all the technicalities involved in blockchain technology.

Safety and Security

The fact that Saxo Bank is a regulated broker implies that it needs to follow the practices to protect funds and data designed by regulators. 

The first thing users should always do is make sure that the website of an online broker uses the required protocol for data encryption. Saxo Bank uses the HTTPS protocol to guarantee the encryption of sensitive data. 

Despite this, users should always take additional measures and be responsible for their accounts since an appropriate protocol doesn’t mean absolute security. 

For instance, users should always set strong passwords, check the URL of the website and the link shared in any email received, and never share their accounts with third parties. 

For what concerns the security of funds, Saxo Bank uses different methods to protect the investment of retailers and institutions. 

The first thing to consider is that Saxo Bank is a compliant broker, and for this reason it requires users to share all the information needed to comply with KYC and AML regulations. This allows users, traders, and investors to work in a safe environment. 

The broker also has a dedicated page used to list the risks involved in trading, to make sure that users are aware of any possible risk and help them to set strategies to deal with these risks. A general rule is that users should never invest more than they can afford to lose.  

The protection of users’ funds is another major goal of Saxo Bank. 

The broker is a member of the Danish Guarantee Fund: banks that are members of this fund guarantee that users’ funds are protected – up to €100,000 for the cash deposits of each account. 

In case of bankruptcy, securities are not affected, but in case a bank is not able to return securities to its customers, the fund insures the securities of each account – up to €20,000 per account.

Customer Support and Education

Saxo Bank highly considers customer support and education. 

It is important to note that, unlike most brokers, Saxo follows its global vocation also when it comes to support. Saxo Bank provides customer support services in different languages. Depending on the country, a user can contact a different office or hub, available thanks to dedicated phone numbers and email addresses. 

This type of support is not the only help provided by the broker. Saxo Bank published a comprehensive help section users can navigate to find answers autonomously: from questions related to different financial products, to questions related to the functioning of the platform, users can solve countless problems. 

Saxo Bank also offers extensive educational resources in the form of blogs, podcasts, videos, and webinars. Moreover, users can benefit from the experience of professional traders if they prefer to invest in managed portfolios.

The broker also offers experts’ insights. There is an entire page – the “Inspiration” page – that collects insights, reports, and comprehensive data. This can help users to better understand markets, the current global economic and financial conditions, and it considers different financial products and levels of experience.

Fees

Saxo Bank offers competitive fees and commissions to traders and investors. 

To dive deeper into the topic, let’s see what fees and commissions are according to the different financial products offered by the broker. 

For US stocks, Saxo Bank offers over 20,000 products for as low as $1 commissions. The same type of commission applies to US listed ETFs, which are offered from over 30 exchanges. 

For futures and options, commissions start at $1.25 per contract. 

Bonds are traded with commissions starting from 0.05%. Mutual funds are offered with $0 commissions.  

The broker gives detailed information about the fees and commissions related to each financial product, and if we compare it to other brokers that address similar customers, we can see that Saxo Bank is not an expensive broker, and that fees and commissions are clearly defined. 

For instance, unlike eToro, Saxo Bank doesn’t use the spread to charge users – something that could make it harder for a trader or investor to assess how much they do spend on trading. 

On the other hand, Saxo Bank’s fees and commissions are higher if compared to a broker like Interactive Brokers, which charges fees and commissions starting from $0.0005 for stocks and ETFs, and from $0.15 for options. 

Fees Breakdown

To be more specific, Saxo Bank lowers fees for traders and investors who tend to be more active and invest more – that is, investors with a higher monthly trading volume. 

In fact, the broker has three fee and commissions tiers – Classic, Platinum and VIP. 

To give a practical example with US stocks, a Classic trader or investor is charged $0.02 per share. The point is that this fee needs to be multiplied for a minimum amount of shares that compose the minimum fee the Classic trader needs to pay – in this case, the minimum charge is $5. In the same case, a Platinum user would be charged $0.015 per share, for a minimum fee of $4. A VIP user would be charged $0.01 per share, for a minimum of $1. 

So, even if the broker shows the minimum fee charged first, users should always double check what their tier will charge them.

The same reasoning applies to the other financial products available on Saxo Bank, and users need to consider that fees and commissions also change according to the market, so they’ll need to check the pricing information released by the broker – also according to their fee tier. 

For bonds, Saxo Bank offers two types of trading, Online trading and Offline trading, and fees change accordingly.

CFDs are traded for as low as $0.4, forex for as low as 0.6 pips, and commodities for as low as $0.1.

Conclusion

This Denmark-based bank, born as a brokerage firm over 30 years ago, shows the advantages of decades of experience also when offering their brokerage services. 

Saxo Bank managed to become a trustworthy broker over the years, and joining the online brokerage markets makes it easier for users to have access to financial products and trade and invest according to different levels of experience. 

The trading platforms offered by the broker fit this goal, as well as a wide range of choice for financial instruments, available markets, and the opportunity to use manage portfolios. 

The extensive educational content and channels, as well as the pages dedicated to risks and inspiration, reflect the intention of the broker to deal with traders and investors who want to make informed decisions, since the broker offers them all the information they need. 

Fees, when compared to those offered by other brokers, might seem less competitive in some cases, but the transparency used to inform traders and investors is appreciated. Saxo Bank is clear in explaining how fees and commissions change not only according to the fee tier of each user, based on volume trading or initial funding amounts, but also that they can change according to market conditions. 

In this sense, traders able to trade more, or who are capable enough to make several accredited trades, can find Saxo Bank extremely competitive in terms of fees and commissions. On the contrary, traders with low volume trading might find it more convenient to opt for high deposits.  

Traders and investors can operate in a safe environment, not only because the broker is regulated and compliant, but also because it uses the necessary protocols to protect users’ data and secure methods to protect users’ funds. 

Despite this, users always need to consider the risks involved in trading, which should be managed not only thanks to the measures taken by a broker, but also thanks to their own responsible behaviors.

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