HFM Review Kenya 2026

HFM Investments Ltd holds CMA Licence Number 155 as a non-dealing online foreign exchange broker under the Capital Markets (Online Foreign Exchange Trading) Regulations 2017. We confirmed it on the CMA licensee register, where it appears as HFM Investments Limited, trading as HF Markets, and on the CMA's list of non-dealing online forex brokers, one of 14. A search of the CMA's website for HFM returned nothing, and HFM is not among the entities named in the CMA's public caution of 11 September 2026. The company's registration number is PVT-BEUJQBA. Its Client Agreement is governed by Kenyan law, and any legal proceedings must be brought in Kenyan courts (47.1 and 47.2).

HFM is part of HF Markets Group, and the website footer lists sister companies in South Africa, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Cyprus and Seychelles; card and payment processing is provided by HF Markets Fintech Services Ltd and/or HF Markets (UK) Ltd, which the Client Agreement says bear no responsibility for your trading account (32.1). The point to understand is how HFM describes the handling of your trades, because its documents describe it in two ways. The Order Execution Policy (version 2026/01) says HFM "always acts as an agent (acting on behalf of its Clients)" (2.3), that it is not the execution venue, and that it transmits your orders to HF Markets Ltd, a Mauritius company holding Investment Dealer licence C110008214 from the Financial Services Commission there (1.2 and 3.1), although clause 3.1 also says HFM acts "as a counterparty". The Client Agreement (version 2026_07) says the Kenyan company "acts, at all times, as a Principal" (4.1), is "the sole execution venue" and "the exclusive counterparty to the Client trades" (6.1), and that "in certain markets, the Company may act as a Market Maker", when it may hold positions contrary to yours (19.1 and 19.3). The Conflicts of Interest Policy says that when HFM accepts a CFD order it deals "as principal for the Company's account". HFM's CMA licence is for a non-dealing broker, which the 2017 Regulations define as one that "acts as a link between the foreign exchange market and a client in return for a commission or mark-up in spreads and does not engage in market making activities" (reg. 2). The documents do not explain how the agency and principal descriptions fit together. They may describe parts of one arrangement, with HF Markets Ltd executing the orders HFM transmits, but we cannot tell from the documents which description governs a retail account. We have seen nothing to suggest HFM acts outside its licence; clause 19.1 says HFM will disclose on written request whether it may act as a market maker.

On client protection, HFM states negative balance protection for retail clients: your losses across all your HFM accounts are capped at the funds in them, and a net negative balance is reset to zero (Client Agreement, 20.4), as the CMA has required of licensed brokers since its Circular No. 03/2023. HFM can decline or reverse it for abusive trading, coordinated trading across accounts, bad faith or a corrected pricing error, and it does not apply to professional clients. Client money is held in omnibus client money accounts kept apart from HFM's own funds (31.1.1), but HFM may let a third party such as an exchange, clearing house or intermediary broker hold it (31.1.2), and the General Risk Disclosure (version 2024/01) warns that segregation "may not afford complete protection" and that a third party may hold the money in an omnibus account (4.1 to 4.3). The documents do not say where the client money accounts are. Unusually, HFM says it passes on to clients all interest earned on client money (31.2.8). None of this is compensation: the CMA's Investor Compensation Fund does not cover online forex brokers, since section 18 of the Capital Markets Act sets it up for the failure of a licensed stockbroker or dealer. We have not seen financial statements for HFM Investments Ltd.

Complaints go in writing to complaints.ke@hfm.com. The Complaints Handling Policy (version 2025/02) promises a reference number within five working days, an initial response within 15 business days and a final response within 30, never later than two months, and says HFM will tell the CMA within 24 hours if a complaint is still unresolved after three months (5.3 to 5.10). An unsatisfied client can take the complaint to the Nairobi Securities Exchange, with the option of escalating it to the CMA through its online complaints form (7.2).

See our guide to the Capital Markets Authority.

Safety signals

Opening was fully online and took about 20 minutes. You register with a phone number or email and a password, or with Google or Apple, confirm you are over 18, verify the phone and the email with one-time codes, and fill in your profile, including a choice of KES or USD for your wallet, which cannot be changed after a transaction. HFM then asks for your address and an investor profile (purpose, net worth, income, expected trading amount, education, source of funds and employment), a self-declaration that the address is your main residence, and five knowledge and experience questions that it says the CMA requires; we were classified as a Retail Client. Identity is checked by Sumsub with an ID card, driving licence or passport, front and back. Our Kenyan ID card was uploaded at 17:47 and approved at 17:49, and manual upload is offered if the automatic check fails.

Trading accounts are opened from the client area. Its default "Exclusive Accounts" tab shows Shield 500, a time-limited promotional account; the standard accounts (Premium, Cent, Zero Spread, Pro and Pro Plus) are under "Superior Accounts", and a 100% Supercharged Bonus account is under "Bonus Accounts". All offer leverage up to 1:400. The Client Agreement lets you cancel within 14 days of activation, by email, provided you have not traded (3.3 and 3.4).

Logging in to the client area from a new device asks for a six-digit code sent by email, with the option to trust up to 10 devices. Two-factor authentication by authenticator app or email is optional; we switched on the authenticator app, which comes with a backup code, and the security settings list your devices and any linked Google or Apple login. The HFM app asks for the 2FA code at login and then offers Touch ID and a PIN.

We traded on a Shield 500 account and did not open a standard account.

1. 1
   Register and verify your phone

   Country, phone number or email and a password of 8 to 15 characters, or Google or Apple sign-in; then a code sent to your phone.

2. 2
   Profile details and email

   Name as on your ID, gender, country of birth, email, date of birth and a KES or USD wallet, which cannot be changed after a transaction; then a six-digit code sent by email.

3. 3
   Address and investor profile

   Address, purpose of the account, net worth, income, expected trading amount, education, source of funds and employment, then a self-declaration that the address is your main residence.

4. 4
   Appropriateness test

   Five questions on knowledge and experience, which HFM says the CMA requires. We were classified as a Retail Client.

5. 5
   Verify with Sumsub

   An ID card, driving licence or passport, front and back. Our Kenyan ID card was approved in about two minutes; manual upload is the fallback.

HFM funds Kenyan accounts by Safaricom M-Pesa, Airtel Money, iPay mobile money, Visa and Mastercard, wire transfer, Neteller and Skrill. The M-Pesa form shows the rate before you pay; on 23 October 2026 it gave 129.84 KES per USD, a minimum of KSh 1,298.41 (about USD 10), a maximum of KSh 250,000, no fee and instant processing. Payments from third parties are prohibited.

We paid KSh 1,300 by M-Pesa. The prompt asked us to pay hfm-investments-ltd, Safaricom confirmed the payment to HFM INVESTMENTS LTD at 6:13 PM with a transaction cost of KSh 0.00, and HFM's "Your Deposit is completed" email arrived the same minute. The trading account showed USD 10.01.

HFM pays out only from the wallet, so we first moved the USD 9.74 in our trading account to the wallet, then asked for an M-Pesa withdrawal. The form showed KSh 1,264.52 at 129.83 KES per USD, marked as indicative, with no HFM fee, "instant" processing and limits of USD 5 to USD 1,650. At 10:11 PM Safaricom confirmed KSh 1,264.56 received from HFM INVESTMENTS LTD BULK, and HFM's "Your withdrawal is completed" email arrived the same minute. The withdrawal page says requests before 10:00 server time are processed the same business day between 7:00 and 17:00, and the Withdrawal Conditions (version 2026/02) allow 24 hours, Monday to Friday (3.1); our Friday evening request was paid at once. Withdrawals go back by the method used to deposit (3.2), and M-Pesa, Neteller, Skrill and wire are offered.

Because the account is in US dollars, both legs are converted. We measured both: 129.84 KES per USD in and about 129.83 out, a gap of about 0.01 percent, and M-Pesa charged nothing either way.

Funding methods

HFM offers forex, commodities, indices, shares, ETFs, bonds and cryptocurrencies, all as CFDs, and gold around the clock, weekends included, as XAUUSD247. Its demo set-up lists more than 500 instruments on MetaTrader 5 and more than 150 on MetaTrader 4. On the MetaTrader 4 web terminal on 23 October 2026 we counted 103 forex pairs, 22 indices, 7 commodities, 11 metals and energies and 3 bonds; the HFM app adds Stocks and ETFs groups, and HFM WebTrader a Cryptos tab, which we did not count. We traded EUR/USD only. Every instrument is a CFD (Client Agreement, 7.1), so you do not own the underlying share, bond or coin.

On the Shield 500 account we used, the cost of a trade is the spread, with no commission. HFM advertises EUR/USD from 1.4 pips on it, but the app quoted 23 to 24 points, about 2.3 to 2.4 pips, at every check between 19:48 and 19:57 on 23 October 2026, and HFM WebTrader showed 2.4 pips at about 20:01. On our 0.01 lot ticket that was about USD 0.24. These are single observations on a promotional account. We found no average spread published by HFM; it advertises lower minimums on Pro (from 0.6 pips) and Pro Plus (from 0.2) with no commission, and 0.0 pips on Zero Spread with a commission whose amount we did not capture. On 2 November 2026, about 12 minutes after we filled in the set-up form for a Pro account, HFM WebTrader quoted EUR/USD, listed as EURUSDr, at 1.12078 and 1.12084, a spread of 0.6 pips. The frame does not show which account was logged in, so we have not counted it as a Pro measurement.

HFM charges no deposit or withdrawal fee (Withdrawal Conditions, 3.6), and Safaricom charged nothing on our M-Pesa deposit or withdrawal. Every account type is marked swap free. HFM's swap-free page promises "$0" for overnight trades and says the feature is available for all clients, but also that it covers "selected trading accounts and instruments", and the Client Agreement lets HFM charge fees on swap-free accounts and remove the status if it judges it misused (25). The EUR/USD contract details list a swap of minus 7.9 long and 0 short, tripled on Wednesdays; our trade was closed after about seven minutes and paid none. After six months with no activity and a positive balance, a dormant fee of USD 5 a month applies, rising to USD 10 after a year, USD 20 after two years and USD 10 more each year after that (27.2).

Because the account is in US dollars, M-Pesa shillings are converted both ways, and we measured both: 129.84 KES per USD in and about 129.83 out, so the currency cost of our round trip was effectively nil. One gap in our own records: after the trade closed the balance stood at USD 10.18 at about 20:02, and when we came to withdraw at 22:08 it was USD 9.74. Our screenshots do not cover the time in between, and show no second trade, fee or adjustment, so we have not counted the USD 0.44 as a cost; it is an open question for HFM.

HFM lists MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, its own HFM WebTrader and the HFM Platform. HFM WebTrader runs in the browser with TradingView charts and lets you trade, see open and closed positions and switch accounts. Our live account ran on MetaTrader 5 on HFM's Kenyan live server, HFMarketsKE-Live2. We checked our closed EUR/USD trade on HFM WebTrader, where the row matched the app to the cent, and opened the MetaTrader 4 web terminal. The client area also offers copy trading and a demo account. We did not trade on MetaTrader 4 or on the desktop terminals.

The HFM app combines the account and trading: deposits, the wallet, transfers and withdrawals, live and demo accounts, MetaTrader 5 trading with stop loss and take profit, trade history, price alerts, news, webinars, calculators and an economic calendar. With two-factor authentication on, it asks for the code at login, then offers Touch ID and a PIN. We ran the whole trade and the withdrawal from the app, and opened a Demo Premium account in it (MetaTrader 5, USD 100,000, 60 days). Once, at 20:25, a Touch ID login failed and the app showed "Network Disconnected"; it worked normally when we next used it.

HFM serves Kenya through HFM Investments Ltd, a CMA-licensed company with a Nairobi office, under a Client Agreement governed by Kenyan law. M-Pesa deposits and withdrawals are free and fast, Airtel Money and iPay mobile money are offered for deposits, and there is a Kenyan phone line, a toll-free number and a Kenyan support email. HFM was running a "Mashujaa Market Masters" promotion on its Kenyan home page when we visited. The gaps are the currency, since trading accounts are in US dollars even when you choose a KES wallet, and the M-Pesa withdrawal cap of USD 1,650 each time. Every account type is marked swap free.

HFM's Kenyan contact page lists a phone line, +254 203 894 292, a toll-free number, 0800 600 889, and support.ke@hfm.com, with a global line on +44 161 818 17 26; deposit questions go to deposit.ke@hfm.com and complaints to complaints.ke@hfm.com. Live chat opens with a chatbot, NalaBot, which answered our question on withdrawals with step-by-step instructions. When we said that had not helped, it passed us to a named agent from Client Support, about two minutes after we opened the chat at 10:17 PM on a Friday; that capture ends at the agent's greeting. We tried again in the HFM app on 2 November 2026: the chatbot handed over the same way, and we asked the agent for the cut-off hours for withdrawals. The answer was "Kindly note you can withdraw any time". That is true of making a request, and our Friday evening withdrawal was paid at once, but the agent did not mention the 10:00 server-time cut-off for same-day processing on HFM's own withdrawal page. We did not call the phone lines.

The HFM app carries HFM Analysis articles by named analysts, a market news feed, free live webinars with dates and presenters (27 October, 3 November and 10 November when we looked), six trading calculators (risk percentage, multitarget, pivot points, position size, notional value and pip value) and an economic calendar. The website lists Autochartist, Premium Trader, Advanced Insights, a Traders' Board and online trading courses. We browsed these in the app but did not work through a course.