A couple of days ago I received an email from Selftrade — with whom I’d forgotten I held a spread betting account, to be honest — informing me that their CFD and Spread Betting offering would be moving from the current City Index trading platform to the London Capital Group (LCG) platform. It means that in future their spread betting web interface will look more like those of Capital Spreads and InterTrader which both run on the LCG platform.
This move is no bad thing, since I prefer the LCG platform to the City Index platform, and they’re not the first “white label” partner to make the switch. I’ve seen the exact same thing happen with two or three other white label spread betting brands, including — if memory serves me correctly — when the Party Markets brand switched to the LCG platform in order to become InterTrader (who currently have a good account-opening offer, by the way).
You don’t have to make the switch to the new LCG-backed Selftrade Markets brand, and if you do absolutely nothing you will remain on the City Index platform as a direct client of City Index themselves.
Despite not being quite so keen on the trading platform, I may well stay put on the City Index variant in this case because I like to diversify my counter-party risk across spread betting platforms as well as across spread betting brands. If you find yourself with stable of LCG-backed spread betting accounts, and no others, you might like to think about diversifying across some of the other entirely separate platforms like IG Index, SpreadEx or Spread Co.
Disclaimer: this posting is for general education only; it is not trading advice.