Global Markets Group Limited’s GMG Prime institutional launch took centre stage in a year that saw the FCA-regulated broker’s turnover rise from £107,122 to £1.64 million and its net loss fall from £717,748 to £161,206, for the year ended 31 March 2026.
From Execution Broker to Prime Services
A year ago, GMG operated primarily as an execution-only broker under a matched-principal restriction, meaning it was required to hedge every client transaction with an external liquidity provider rather than taking positions itself. The business earned income from spreads, commissions and overnight financing on retail and professional accounts.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) removed that restriction in July 2025, permitting GMG to internalise a proportion of client orders, a change that significantly broadened the firm’s business model. The company says it still hedged most client positions and kept market exposure minimal during the transition year.
Gross profit climbed to £954,966 from £49,206, while the operating loss narrowed to £202,235 from £730,416. After interest income, the net loss came to £161,206. GMG ended the year with £2.71 million in own funds and £1.25 million in liquid assets, both reported as above regulatory minimums.
Behind the GMG Prime Institutional Launch
GMG launched its GMG Prime institutional division in November, targeting brokerages, family offices and hedge fund managers. The platform aggregates pricing from Tier 1 banks, brokers and hedge funds, covering spot and forward foreign exchange, metals, commodities, indices and shares.
To underpin the technology side, GMG integrated the Ultency Matching Engine from MetaQuotes. Ultency connects client brokers via MetaTrader 5, handling price aggregation, order matching and real-time risk management through FIX connectivity (a standardised messaging protocol used across institutional trading systems).
On the credit side, GMG signed a prime-of-prime agreement with Hidden Road Partners CIV UK (a prime-of-prime broker acts as an intermediary, giving smaller firms access to liquidity and credit lines that would otherwise require direct relationships with major banks). The agreement was signed in March and went live after the year-end in June. It gives GMG a single credit counterparty spanning foreign exchange, metals, exchange-traded derivatives, fixed income and digital assets, reducing the need for multiple bilateral margin and settlement arrangements.
Hidden Road Partners CIV UK holds both an FCA investment firm licence and an FCA digital asset firm registration, making it, at the time of its December 2022 announcement, the only prime broker to carry both credentials simultaneously.
The firm has since grown in scale. In April 2025, Hidden Road entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by Ripple, the digital asset infrastructure provider, for $1.25 billion, subject to regulatory approvals. The OTC swaps and digital asset prime brokerage services sit within Hidden Road Partners CIV UK, the same FCA-regulated entity that serves as GMG’s counterparty. Hidden Road also received FINRA approval to operate as a broker-dealer in the United States, covering fixed income repo and global funding services.
For GMG, that means its core credit relationship sits with a counterparty that is expanding rapidly across asset classes and jurisdictions. Whether that adds resilience or introduces transition risk as the Ripple deal progresses will be worth watching.
What Comes Next for GMG
Management has set out plans for FY2027 to consolidate operational growth and build revenue across trading, commissions, financing and market making. The company also intends to continue investing in its Consumer Duty framework, including annual fair-value assessments and outcome monitoring.
The revenue base at £1.64 million remains modest, and the firm is still loss-making. The real test for the GMG Prime institutional launch comes in the year now under way, when the Hidden Road agreement is fully operational and the matched-principal restriction has been gone for twelve months. If institutional client volumes track the growth seen in the retail book, the path to profitability starts to narrow.
