Saxo Group Reviews 

Have just been through an Onboarding process with Saxo to allow our company to invest in the markets using Saxo as a broker. It is a time consuming process bus was made very easy by the Saxo team and in particular by Charlotte. She was in very regular communication with us and explained each step clearly and efficiently. Clear instructions were given as to the documents we needed to provide and timeframes were given as to when we were to expect a response.

To avoid if you want transparency on executions.

I am still extremely unhappy about their execution flow on Toronto stock exchange esp. on illiquid stocks.
They place only half of the order on TSE, the second half supposedly placed on "other liquidity providers" which their trading desk has no clue about. This lack of transparency could easily hide front-running, trading against their market-maker without giving me fair price executions. I have no idea whether this lack of transparency is even consistent with regulations.
Anyway, this smart routing is just inefficient and seems to have been designed without valuable input from anyone who understand how the market actually moves.

Jaya the customer service agent helped solve a tricky account issue , and 2 other agents previously could not solve it before her. It was a slightly tricky request possibly.

She got the answer then forwarded me a email in the case log and gave it back to me for my records. very good service. She went above and beyond and her english seemed very good. Response time good, everything met well. Knowledge good too.

also saxo in general has lowered its monthly fees for stock ISA its very cheap now per month and the dealing fees too have got much more cheaper..

the one small issue I saw is that in order to take part in votes for shares on company decision there is a charge of 5 USD per Share / vote to vote. So unless its a giant company ( very high stock price per share usually) it seems you will pay many multiples higher than your shares value just to cast every single vote 5USD each!!! Not sure this is just saxo doing this issue with votes being exorbitantly expensive or its industry wide? But either way its too expensive and gives smaller share holders less voting rights as they are priced out.

I’ve had a really positive experience with Saxo Group. The platform is professional, reliable, and offers a wide range of trading and investment options. Everything feels secure and well-designed, and the customer support team are knowledgeable and helpful. It’s clear they operate at a high standard within the industry.

It is sometimes said that there are five stages of grief (associated with bad life experiences). I think there are also five stages that apply to (poor) experiences with service firms:

1. Surprise. Most organisations get most things right most of the time. Business is competitive and poor performance is generally punished. For this same reason most problems get solved at this stage, so one never reaches the stages below.

2. Frustration. You tried to solve the problem but there is some kind of a sticking point. Here you will often ask to speak to a manager, and after a short and agreeable conversation the whole thing gets sorted out and everyone can get on with more productive pursuits.

3. Anger. There is something really unusually wrong with this business. Why are they behaving in this way? Will you have to go to an external arbiter? How much unnecessary time and energy is all of this going to take up?

4. Bemusement. “Well, this is bizarre.” How has this business survived this long, carrying on like this? What kind of business culture breeds such poor performance? Could this business be a good object of study in a course on how not to run an operation? Have I just been incredibly unlucky??

5. Morbid curiosity. This business would not be any good for a study, it seems simply too far gone. How on earth could any business operate like this and remain viable? Why would staff stay? If it looks this bad from the outside, it must be an order of magnitude worse on the inside… what on earth does that look like? How long is it before this business is read the last rights (or is it some kind of zombie business, continuing on despite abject failure)?

It is exceedingly rare that my perspective on a business ever moves to stage 5, but Saxo got me there - so that is some kind of an achievement I guess.

Looking at other reviews, I see that I am by no means the only person to have poor experiences with Saxo, so I’m satisfied it's not mere bad luck. Hopefully my review can help others.

I had an account with Saxo for six years and only ever bought three stocks in it (all in the year I opened the account). I used the account so little because, after I sold my first stock on the platform, Saxo (without my consent/instructions) traded with the proceeds. To their credit they admitted the mistake quickly, but then it took an inordinate amount of work to have my money returned to me (calls, notes, letters, and I even contacted the Danish regulatory authorities). Part of the problem seemed to be that it was impossible to talk to anyone in authority. Saxo did - at least - apologise profusely to me after sorting this out. That was the reason I did not close the account then and there.

The account was quiet for some years after this, but then a second problem arose. Saxo was suddenly insisting I send to them all manner of documents (some notably bizarre). These would, inter alia, disclose the makeup of my portfolio, which of their competitors I use, and how much I use them. Saxo claimed that its interest was in my source of funds, but then asked for income records for the years after I opened my account and bought my only positions in it. Without a time machine, there could be no relationship.

I have been an investor for over thirty years. My portfolio includes holdings across four continents. I have used a fair few brokers over the years. I have never seen anything remotely like this.

Even worse, it was again impossible to speak to anyone who either knew what was going on or who was in a position of authority. After more than five requests in writing to speak to a manager (request which were simply ignored/"ghosted") I did manage to get someone on the phone who promised me a call from a manager "within 24 hours". This call never came. In desperation and bemusement I even tried DM-ing a senior Saxo manager via Linkedin. Again, "crickets". I will contact the new owners of Saxo, J. Safra Sarasin, to let them know of my experiences. If I was an owner I would want to know that this kind of thing was going on at one of my subsidiaries.

In my view, there are so many reasons to prefer its competitors to Saxo. There is the constant drip of fees and there are transfers that don't turn up (relating to systemic problems, an honest staff member admitted). The biggest problem of all, however, is that they set their systems up to be impervious to rational discourse. This means that when systems/staff go off the rails there is no simple way of getting things back on track.

Brokers require unique levels of trust from their clients. We give them our assets, and all they give us in return is a piece of paper (and these days, even that paper is virtual). Not only would I not recommend Saxo, if any of my friends or associates were to be contemplating using them, I would counsel against this in the strongest terms.

We wanted to update our national identity cards, as they were recently changed. To do this, we had to contact an agent from Saxo Bank through the Saxotrader platform. The response from Anna was immediate and polite. Our request was solved successfully in a very short time.

THE most appalling and incompetent treatment of an established customer.
I passed Saxo's vetting procedure to set up an account in 2022 and load it with approved funds to trade shares. 2 years later, they embarked on a KYC process which I understand has to happen from time to time. Unfortunately they became obsessed with my company dividends which were not physically taken out of the company but rather left in as an investment or directors loan, as I had cash reserves, as explained when I set up the account. This was not acceptable apparently, and my failure to show a bank transfer of those dividends, which did not exist, and is perfectly normal, was apparently cause for them to deny me access to my account and fire sell all my shares at a £30k loss. They even asked for the evidence that my company bought the private shares instead, would of course have been illegal - these guys are just not fit to trade. Whether or not I cash my dividends was of no relevance to my account or KYC. Do not trust your money with these out and out sharks who will throw you in a ditch for no reason.

Subject: Avoid Saxo Bank UK at All Costs – Incompetent, Disorganized, and a Complete Waste of Time

I strongly advise anyone considering Saxo Bank UK to stay away. The level of incompetence and disorganization we experienced is beyond belief.

To provide some context: after two months of being completely stalled by Saxo Bank, we decided to test the waters elsewhere. We submitted an application to Interactive Brokers (IBKR) with only a fraction of the documentation we had already provided to Saxo. Despite that, IBKR approved our corporate account in just **2-3 business days**. Our paperwork was immaculate, well-supported, and raised no red flags whatsoever.

In contrast, Saxo Bank has kept our application in limbo for over two months. Their compliance department appears completely lost—lacking even a basic understanding of standard business concepts. They have repeatedly asked nonsensical questions, many of which had already been clarified in previous correspondence. Their inquiries into our business plans and source of funds have gone well beyond the scope of reasonable due diligence, dragging on without resolution.

To make matters worse, their sales agents are equally unreliable. Tickets are left unanswered for weeks, agreed-upon conference calls are missed without notice, and no final decision on the account approval has ever been provided.

In over 30 years of dealing with international brokers, I have never witnessed anything like this circus-like experience with Saxo Bank. Save yourself the frustration and take your business elsewhere.

Anurag was the best customer service representative from Saxo that I have had to date. In fact, I really hope he's always on shift when I call. I'm new to Saxo so had a lot of questions to ask...Anurag was very patient and very knowledgeable. Thank you Anurag for such a great and pleasant experience. :)

In my experience, Saxo and Bitci Stack Asset have been the only investment platforms where I've genuinely seen returns and been able to withdraw my profits without any delays

Very professional work on my call.

I went in a few days from delighted to deeply frustrated. A new customer at Saxo, I do appreciate their trading platform TraderGo. Yet, for security reasons which I can understand (I used the same phone number on my account and a family member's while supporting their opening a new Saxo account), my trading account was suddenly restricted to Sell only. Problem : no prior warning was ever received contrary to their own procedure and no corrective steps could be taken to prevent the issue. I removed my phone number immediately. Since then (6 days), my messages have gotten no replies and I do not know when my account's functionalities will be restored (days?weeks?). Customer Service is unhelpfull they just don't care.
I am stuck, losing trading opportunities every day and very disappointed!!!

Anurag dealt with my issues promptly and resolved the matter to my satisfaction. He then followed up with a personal phone call. Very impressed.

My account was closed for almost 3 months which restricted any trading due to some financial audit where I was required to submit a series of document.

I submitted these documents according to the guidelines and had to wait almost 3 months to get my account unlocked. for almost 3 months I spoke/ emailed/ chatted with Saxo employees on a weekly basis and every week got told that my account would be opened the following week. This never turned out to be true. Just empty promisses.

The last Saxo employee I spoke to was at least honest as said I should expect to wait another month as the Analysts were busy.

Then finally after almost 3 months my account got unlocked and I could trade again.

More than 20 emails and calls and even official complaint (which just got a soulless automated response from a no-reply email). Not a single person actually took my case serious.

Then just now, a month or so later, my account got locked again for the same reasons as the first time and Saxo is now requesting the exact same documents that were submitted AND approved a month ago.

Rinse and repeat. I'm currently busy waiting in call queue for 30 min. while chatting to a useless automated chat bot.

This is the 3rd time this happens where my account is blocked for months with no warning.

My wife and I will both move our assets away from Saxo as soon as possible.

They required actually all of my financial data about income and assets. Including tax declaration. They threaten to close my account if I don't comply. I tried to figure out, what could be done about it by opening a chat, but the lady just told me, that I cannot get in touch with an analyst, who sets the requirements. They sent me all the time emails with the count-down of days left to comply like '15 days left', '10 days left', .... After reading reviews about blocked accounts, I was definitely alarmed. I transferred all stock title and closed the account. After all, I had much money there. It was a real bad and stressful experience.

I was interested in opening a Trader account, utilising te PEA rules in France. Things started to go wrong immediately. A week or more after submitting my application I had heard nothing. I contacted Saxo asking if there was a problem, they suggested that I'd told them I had no income except for trading, and would not be interested. I'm pretty sure I hadn't clicked that box, but assured them that I had an income. So, I had to prove to them I had trading experience and funds to transfer. Eventually they graciously agreed to open an account. Then my problems began. I transferred some funds from Wise (belgian account) - but Wise stalled, and didn't transfer the funds, odd I thought. I then transferred funds from Bunq (from a French account) and waited for the funds to appear. They never arrived. I tried again, this too never arrived. I tried their antiquated chat service, and found that they didn't like challenger banks, and won't accept funds from them (?!?!). I then tried to transfer funds from HSBC in GBP vis CitiBank (a Big Boy bank), but my funds seemingly have disappeared even though Citi have confirmed receipt and I have the UETR number. Save yourself a world of pain and don't deal with these people, you'll save yourself a heap of time, effort and pain.

I recently attempted an ISA transfer with Saxo and it has been an utterly frustrating experience. From the start, I received no meaningful updates on the progress of my transfer. They repeatedly told me they were waiting for information from my existing provider, but my provider had already sent everything over weeks ago and were actually waiting for Saxo to provide their bank details for the transfer!

Trying to get answers was even more frustrating. Their in-app chat will cut you off if they don’t want to deal with you, phone lines are perpetually busy with recorded messages, and emails go unanswered. The app itself is not intuitive at all, which only adds to the stress when it’s your money at stake.

Overall, Saxo’s lack of communication, poor app usability, and inability to provide support make this a very stressful and unreliable platform. I would not recommend it.

Was very helpful. Understood the issues and showed great patience in solving. Very friendly and kind person. I am sure he has a great future ahead 👏👏👏

I recently opened an account with them. The opening process in Switzerland took about 30 minutes only, everything reviewed and all validations completed in this extremely short time, immediately a fully functioning account. I had an issue that the base currency was set to USD somehow while opening the account, I guess because of browser and OS system language that I used was English. I called the support hotline and they could still solve the problem for me, required me to log in and walk thru some easy steps. I am amazed of such good and smooth service here. I tried previously to open an account at Swissquote, nothing worked, I lost patience after 10 days and almost zero customer support, that account is still not functioning and I am incredible pi*sed there. Coming to Saxo was like a relief and definitely the best choice and even many of the Saxo fees are up to 4 times lower than at Swissquote.