Will Hardy has been named the new Eightcap UK Executive Director, with his appointment to lead Eightcap Group Ltd confirmed on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) register. Hardy brings more than 35 years of financial markets experience to the role, anchored by more than a decade as Head of Retail Sales at IG Group.
For UK retail traders, seeing a senior individual named to the Eightcap UK Executive Director position on the FCA register confirms that Eightcap Group Ltd has gone through the regulator’s assessment process for controlled functions under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR). It is a standard compliance step, but its completion signals that the UK entity’s governance processes are running in the expected way.
A Career Built Across Retail and Institutional Derivatives
Hardy’s career is grounded in derivatives (financial contracts whose value derives from an underlying asset such as currencies, shares or commodities). In his LinkedIn profile, he describes working “mainly in derivatives,” covering “exchange traded futures and multi asset OTC” products including CFDs (contracts for difference, which let traders take a position on price moves without owning the underlying asset), spread betting, FX and crypto. He adds that he has worked with “a variety of brokers, from big international houses to bootstrapping start ups,” serving both institutional and retail clients.
His most recent role before Eightcap was Head of Partners for EMEA at Trade Nation, held for roughly one year. Before that, he spent about one year and four months as Global Head of Commercial Operations and Head of UK Sales and Support at Zenfinex, and more than three years as General Manager at TigerWit Group. Earlier positions included roughly 10 months as Head of FX at Tera Europe and more than two years as Business Development Manager at LMAX Exchange.
The role that will draw most attention in UK retail trading circles is his decade-plus tenure at IG Group, where he led retail sales. IG is one of the UK’s largest providers of CFD and spread-betting services to retail clients, meaning Hardy spent more than ten years understanding how retail traders engage with leveraged products, what brings them to a broker and what keeps them. That depth of experience sits directly at the centre of what Eightcap’s UK operation needs to develop.
The Eightcap UK Executive Director Appointment Follows a Busy Period of Change
Hardy’s appointment is distinct from the CEO vacancy left by Ollie Rosewell’s departure. Rosewell left as Chief Executive Officer of Eightcap’s UK operation after about eight months, while Hardy joins as Executive Director, a separate senior oversight role within the regulated entity. At the Australian parent, Bryn Newell has replaced Alex Howard as Chief Executive Officer; Howard had led Melbourne-headquartered Eightcap for more than two and a half years.
Eightcap was founded in 2015 and now employs between 501 and 1,000 people, according to its LinkedIn company profile. The broker’s careers page states that the company “builds trading infrastructure that connects people to global CFD markets reliably, securely and at scale.” Its official trading platform page lists JPMorgan, Barclays, NAB and AWS among its global partners, alongside payments providers PayPal, Skrill and Worldpay.
Simulated Trading Challenges Now Available Through TradingView
Alongside the appointment, Eightcap has connected its Challenges evaluation product with TradingView, the charting platform used widely by retail traders. Eligible clients can now work through the broker’s simulated trading challenges directly within TradingView’s interface, rather than switching between separate tools.
Eightcap has maintained a live-trading partnership with TradingView since 2022 and launched its own simulated trading challenges in late 2024, following its decision to end MetaTrader services for third-party proprietary trading firms. The integration closes a practical gap: traders who already use TradingView for market analysis can move directly into the evaluation process without changing platforms.
For retail traders assessing Eightcap, the combination of a new Eightcap UK Executive Director with deep retail CFD experience and a tighter product offering through TradingView points toward a broker consolidating its UK presence rather than simply managing a period of senior turnover. The question is whether that intent shows up in the product, the pricing and the client experience over the months ahead.
