The complaint
Patricia was a customer of Trade Currencies Limited, a trading platform company facilitating online trading of currencies for its customers.
Patricia complained to FSCL that Trade Currencies did not pay her the profits she generated of $178,200 USD over 3 days in April 2014.
Trade Currencies said there was an error in the prices quoted for Patricia’s trades during that time by Reuters. Trade Currencies said that Patricia had taken advantage of the error by conducting a number of ultra-fast transactions. Trade Currencies claimed that Patricia was not entitled to be paid the profits of $178,200 USD because they had been generated as a result of an error. Further, Trade Currencies said that its terms and conditions gave it the right not to pay the profits of $178,200 USD because they were obtained by way of an error.
The settlement offer
Nevertheless, Trade Currencies offered to pay Patricia of 10% of the amount she had deposited with it to cover the trades, to settle the complaint. Patricia did not accept the offer.
Outside FSCL’s jurisdiction
We wrote to Patricia and outlined our preliminary view that her complaint was outside FSCL’s jurisdiction to investigate.
FSCL only has the jurisdiction to investigate complaints where the compensation being sought is $200,000 NZD or less. At the time, $178,200 USD equated to more than $200,000 NZD.
In addition, FSCL cannot award compensation for consequential loss, only for direct financial loss. As it appeared that Patricia had not actually lost any of the money she had originally deposited with Trade Currencies, her complaint was about consequential loss and also outside our jurisdiction to investigate.
Patricia and Trade Currencies then entered into further discussions and reached an agreement that Trade Currencies would make payment to Patricia of $107,607.30 USD. Patricia accepted this amount in full and final settlement of her complaint.
