Saxo Bank Referral Code

What the Saxo Bank referral link actually pays you

You are the one being invited, and you are the one Saxo pays. Its UK referral page states that both sides receive £500 in commission-free trades once the new account is funded within 30 days of approval, ready to use within 90 days. The Dutch version of the same program is one-sided and far smaller: it promises the new client €100 in transaction-fee credit and mentions no reward for the existing client at all. Which Saxo site you sign up through therefore decides what the offer is worth.

Commission credit is not money you can withdraw. It appears as a separate balance in your account. You place trades and pay Saxo's standard fees upfront, and Saxo refunds the eligible fees at the end of each trading day until the credit runs out or expires. On the UK terms it cannot be applied to FX, FX options or CFDs. The Dutch terms list what it does cover: shares, ETFs, bonds, futures and options.

That mechanism decides what the reward is really worth to you. Saxo's Classic tier charges 0.08% commission on London Stock Exchange trades, with a minimum of £0.01. Working through the full credit at that rate would take roughly £625,000 of trade value inside the 90 day window. Someone who opens an account with £10,000 and buys two ETFs pays about £8 in commission and therefore captures about £8 of the credit. The headline is a ceiling only a heavily active trader with a large balance reaches. A normal investor captures single or low double digits, not hundreds.

The referrer receives the same credit under the UK terms and, going by Saxo's Dutch page, nothing in the Netherlands. Saxo does not cap how many invitations one client can send.

The entity, the regulator, and what is actually protected

Saxo Bank A/S is a Danish bank, company registration number 15731249, licence number 1149, supervised by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority. It has operated since 1992 and reports more than 1.5 million clients, over €150 billion in client assets and offices in 11 countries. Open an account in the Netherlands, Belgium, France or the Czech Republic and you are a client of a branch operating under that Danish banking licence. Open one in the United Kingdom and you contract instead with Saxo Capital Markets UK Ltd, a separate company authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 551422.

Cash and securities are protected differently, and treating them as one thing is the mistake to avoid. Under the Danish scheme, registered cash deposits are covered up to the equivalent of €100,000 per depositor if Saxo enters resolution or bankruptcy proceedings. Your shares and bonds are not covered by that figure. They are held as client assets and, as a general rule, returned to you. Only where Saxo fails to return them does the Danish Guarantee Fund step in, and then only up to the equivalent of €20,000 of the value that could not be returned. The fund is administered by Finansiel Stabilitet, a company owned by the Danish state.

The UK entity works differently again. Saxo says client money there is held in trust in segregated bank accounts and client assets in segregated custodian accounts, kept apart from its own money. Its own page puts FSCS protection at £85,000 per person per firm for protected investment business. It also cites £120,000 for cash deposits, but that is the FSCS limit for money held with a deposit-taking bank; Saxo Capital Markets UK Ltd is an investment firm, so £85,000 is the figure covering a UK client's cash and securities there.

None of these schemes covers investment losses. They exist for the failure of the firm, not the failure of your portfolio.

What Saxo costs once the credit is gone

Saxo's Classic tier, the one you start on, charges 0.08% commission on the London Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext Amsterdam and Paris and Xetra, with minimums as small as £0.01, $0.01 or €0.01. Smaller markets cost more: 0.12% with a €5 minimum on the Spanish and Vienna exchanges, 0.25% in Prague. ETF commissions start at 0.08%, bonds at 0.2%, and mutual funds carry no commission and no platform fee. Those rates are competitive, and they are not where the money goes.

The custody fee is. Saxo charges 0.12% a year on stock, ETF, ETC and bond positions for Classic and Platinum accounts, 0.08% for VIP, and 0.05% on funds. It is calculated daily using end of day values, billed monthly, and applies whether or not you trade at all. Saxo notes the rate varies by country of residence and that it applies no minimum custody fee. On a €20,000 portfolio that is €24 a year for doing nothing, and Saxo warns it can push your cash balance negative, which then attracts negative interest.

Currency conversion is the cost people miss. Trade an instrument priced in a currency other than your account's base currency and Saxo converts at the FX spot mid-price plus or minus 0.60% on a Classic account, 0.40% on Platinum and 0.20% on VIP. Buy $5,000 of a US share from a euro account and the conversion costs roughly $30 while the commission costs roughly $4. It lands again when you sell.

The better rates are tier gated, and the gate is high. Classic has no minimum. Platinum requires minimum initial funding of £200,000 or 120,000 reward points; VIP requires £1,000,000 or 500,000 points. Points accrue at 0.6 per euro funded during your first 30 days and 250 per €10,000 of stock or ETF turnover after that. In practice almost every retail investor stays on Classic and pays the 0.60% conversion rate permanently.

Saxo charges no inactivity fee. It does charge €50 per order placed by phone, chat or email, $50 when a Classic client asks for reports by post or email, and €50 per line of stock to transfer holdings out to another broker, capped at €160.

How to claim it

There is no code to type. The invitation travels inside the link, so the account has to be opened from it.

• Open the invite link and begin the account application from it.
• Complete Saxo's identity checks and wait for approval.
• Fund the account within 30 days of approval. Funding is the step that triggers the credit, not signing up.
• Find the balance under Invite a friend in the platform menu, or in the portfolio overview.
• Trade as normal. Fees are refunded daily until the credit is used up or the 90 days run out.

What you are taking on

Saxo puts the warning at the top of every page on its own site: the value of your investments may go up or down, and your capital is at risk. The charges above do not move with performance. A 0.12% custody fee and a 0.60% conversion cost come out of the account in a bad year exactly as they do in a good one.

The 90 day expiry deserves its own thought. A credit that only converts into value when you trade, and that disappears on a fixed date, is an incentive to trade more than you otherwise would. If the offer pulls you into trades you had not planned, those trades will cost you more in spread, conversion and tax than the credit hands back.

Saxo is also not only a share dealing account. Futures, listed options and CFDs sit in the same platform and can lose more than the fees ever will. If your account breaches 100% margin utilisation, Saxo may close positions and cancel orders automatically rather than wait for you. Futures held overnight carry a financing cost at the relevant interbank rate plus a 2.5% markup on a Classic account. The credit does not apply to CFDs or FX in any case.

Pros, cons, and who Saxo actually suits

What Saxo is genuinely good at is breadth under a real banking licence. More than 71,000 instruments across stocks, ETFs, bonds, funds, futures and options from one login, no inactivity fee, mutual funds at zero commission and zero platform fee, and a Danish bank licence rather than an e-money permission. If you want listed bonds and options sitting next to your shares in one account, very few retail platforms in Europe cover all of it.

What is wrong with it for most people is the shape of the pricing. The percentage custody fee penalises holding, the 0.60% conversion rate penalises buying anything priced in another currency, and both are the default because the cheaper tiers need six figures of funding. Leaving is expensive too, at €50 per line of stock. The sign-up credit offsets none of that; it is a short-lived fee refund that changes nothing after the first quarter.

Saxo suits an investor with a substantial portfolio who trades across several markets and asset classes and wants it held at a licensed bank. It does not suit someone putting a few thousand euros into two or three ETFs and leaving them alone. For that reader the custody percentage grinds away quietly every year, and a flat-fee or commission-free broker will be cheaper. DEGIRO and Trading 212 are the two Saxo is most often costed against by European investors. If the credit is the reason you are opening the account, it is the wrong reason.

Saxo changed owner this year, and is finishing the job

Saxo's shareholder register turned over completely in 2026. In March, the J. Safra Sarasin Group completed the acquisition of approximately 71% of Saxo Bank, a stake previously held by Geely Financials Denmark A/S, Mandatum Group and other minority shareholders. Daniel Belfer, previously chief executive of Bank J. Safra Sarasin, became chief executive of Saxo Bank, and founder Kim Fournais moved to chairman of the board while keeping roughly 28%.

In July, Saxo announced that J. Safra Sarasin had agreed to buy that remaining stake of about 28.69% from Fournais, held indirectly through Saxo Holding AG. On completion, subject to regulatory approvals, the Swiss private bank will own 100% of Saxo. Fournais remains chairman.

None of this changes the licence or the protection described above, which sit with Saxo Bank A/S and its local entities. What it does change is who sets the prices. Saxo has rewritten its commission and custody schedule more than once in recent years, and a new sole owner whose core business is private banking has its own view of what a retail platform should charge. Read the current rates page and referral terms on Saxo's own site before you fund an account, rather than trusting any figure, including these, that carries an older date.

Saxo Bank referral code FAQ