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XTB will take a guarded approach to building its UK business, chief executive Omar Arnaout said on Thursday, citing the cost of challenging firms already established in the market. He also said Indonesia now brings in more monthly account openings than any XTB market apart from Poland.
The comments came after XTB reported a fourfold increase in third-quarter profit to PLN 213.7 million (about $54.4 million) on Wednesday. The contrast between the two markets is relevant to the broker's expansion plans: its UK operation remains small beside local competitors, while Indonesia has risen quickly in its account-opening rankings.
Arnaout had already framed both countries as tests for 2026. In January, he described the UK as a test year; in March, he told FinanceMagnates.com Indonesia had six months to demonstrate its potential.
Signals behind the market split
- UK accounts and revenue: XTB's British unit generated £8.64 million (about $11.6 million) in 2025, more than twice its previous revenue, but Trading 212 recorded £277.6 million in the UK that year. Finance Magnates calculated that XTB's revenue was about 3% of its rival's. XTB's December 2024 launch was a stocks and shares ISA with no fees; this year it followed up with a cash ISA. At the end of September, its quarterly reports counted 11,767 ISA and cash ISA accounts, up from 10,717 three months earlier. That increase of about 1,050 accounts compares with the 152,000 customers AJ Bell added in the 12 months to September.
- German spending: XTB is preparing next year's budgets. Arnaout said Germany would receive a significant increase in marketing investment as the broker competes with Trade Republic and Scalable Capital. In June, he said German marketing spending would exceed Poland's this year. He also described Germany as one of XTB's most important revenue markets, although the company does not publish a separate figure for it.
- French sign-ups: Arnaout said XTB expected to be among France's three or four most popular investing apps by the end of the year. Revenue in the country has not yet matched the pace of account sign-ups.
- Indonesian products: XTB acquired a 90% stake in Eagle Capital Futures in January 2024. It initially offered US stocks and exchange-traded funds there, then received approval to provide contracts for difference (CFDs) this summer. The company previously said Indonesia produced its fastest first 1,000 accounts, while deposits remained low and its brand was unfamiliar locally. In August, its Indonesian unit reported that funded accounts had risen 741.51% in the first half compared with the second half of 2025. It also announced CFDs on gold, silver, palladium, oil and natural gas. XTB's quarterly report says Options were added in the third quarter.
- Campaign timing: Indonesia is among the markets covered by XTB's advertising campaign with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Tyson Fury, which began on October 1. Arnaout said the broker increased marketing for CFDs this week and expected to assess demand within four to five weeks.
Expansion paths across three markets
Foreign brokers have also entered Indonesia's regulated futures market through acquisitions and licensing. Plus500 took over Global Intra Berjangka, a local broker that had stopped accepting new clients, as Finance Magnates reported last December. AIMS opened a Jakarta office in May with a licence from the Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (Bappebti).
The customer pool reported for that market numbers tens of thousands. Bappebti rated 67 active futures brokers in the second quarter. FM Intelligence data put active retail customers at 70,676 in November 2024, a 53.93% rise year on year.
Its heat map showed 5.5 million organic visits to retail FX and CFD broker websites in Indonesia in the third quarter, 0.9% below the second quarter. Asia-Pacific traffic declined 33% over the same period.
What this means on the desk
The reported figures do not show country-level account totals for XTB, and they do not break out German revenue. Operations teams assessing the expansion should establish which account, funding and revenue measures the broker uses internally to compare these markets. They should also ask how the new Indonesian CFD and Options activity is reflected in product-level reporting and reconciliation.
For UK planning, the gap between XTB's ISA account growth and the larger customer addition reported by AJ Bell is a useful prompt to check onboarding conversion and account servicing capacity, not evidence of the cause of that gap. In Indonesia, the broker expects to have an early read on CFD demand within four to five weeks. Whether that leads to changes in capacity, controls or reporting is not specified; those are questions to resolve once the demand data is available.
