XTB Wins Approval to Manage Client Portfolios and Starts Selling Crypto in Spain

XTB received permission from the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) on Friday to manage investment portfolios on behalf of its clients. The commission granted the permit unanimously, according to its communiqué.

The Warsaw-listed broker has also opened spot cryptocurrency trading in Spain, where clients can buy more than 40 crypto assets outright instead of through contracts for difference (CFDs), according to XTB's Spanish website. Spain is its third spot crypto market after Chile and Cyprus.

Both steps add business outside CFDs, which still produce almost all of XTB's trading income. CFDs generated PLN 1.98 billion (about $504 million) of its PLN 2.07 billion gross result on financial instruments in the first half of 2026.

That share, about 96%, held even as stocks, ETFs and Investment Plans brought in most new clients.

London's trading industry is coming home!

A Permit Over PLN 50 Billion of Client Assets

Portfolio management lets a licensed firm make investment decisions for a client within an agreed mandate. XTB has not named the products yet.

The assets it could manage have grown with its stock and ETF business. Clients held PLN 50.31 billion with XTB at the end of June, including PLN 23.35 billion in stocks and PLN 20.02 billion in ETFs, spread across almost 1.49 million active accounts.

The permit came from the same regulator that fined XTB PLN 20 million in a decision dated March 30 over how it tested clients' experience before selling them CFDs.

XTB's management wants less of the business tied to CFDs. Chief Executive Omar Arnaout said in February he wanted CFDs to fall to about 70% of revenue from around 95%, arguing that investors would value a more diversified business differently.

Noble Securities analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski called the permit a longer-term step toward a wider offer and higher revenue per client, StockWatch.pl reported. He rated it neutral for the shares.

Per-client returns are the measure that has slipped as XTB grew. Its revenue rose about ninefold between 2019 and 2025 while profitability per client fell 76%, FM Intelligence calculations show.

Spanish Clients Get Coins, Polish Clients Wait

Spain extends a rollout XTB has run one market at a time, with a similar menu in each. After winning a Cyprus spot crypto license in December 2025, it opened trading there in the first half of 2026 with more than 35 assets, then launched in Chile in August with 46.

That puts the three menus between 35 and 46 coins, with Spain at more than 40.

Spain drew 5.3% of organic traffic to retail FX and CFD broker websites in the third quarter, sixth among all countries, FM Intelligence's heat map shows. XTB serves it through XTB Limited, its Cyprus-based subsidiary.

That entity is licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC ) under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. Clients buy and sell in dollars from $2 and cannot transfer coins in or out, the website says.

"Our goal is for the XTB app to become investors' first choice in Europe," Arnaout said, according to Polish daily Parkiet.

XTB has used Spain for earlier launches too, rolling out options on 110 US stocks and ETFs in April and redesigned Investment Plans in July there alongside Germany.

Polish clients still cannot buy spot crypto at XTB. It cannot say when the service will reach its home market, because Poland has not passed the law that supplements MiCA, Parkiet reported.

President Karol Nawrocki vetoed versions of that bill in December 2025, February 2026 and June 2026. If it is not adopted, XTB may serve Polish clients through its Cypriot subsidiary, FinanceMagnates.com reported in August.

XTB is due to publish preliminary third-quarter results and hold an online conference on Thursday.