Onboarding Friction for EU-based Prop Firms – My Experience
Been looking at a few prop firms based out of the EU recently, specifically those advertising tighter spreads on $EURUSD and $XAUUSD for larger capital accounts. What's striking is the variation in the KYC/AML process. Some are smooth, practically automated, running checks in minutes. Others, however, are a real grind – weeks of back-and-forth for basic documentation, even with a clean record and a well-established trading history. It makes me wonder about their back-office efficiency and, by extension, potential payout reliability down the line. Is anyone else encountering this significant disparity? It's not just the time involved, but the nature of the requests that sometimes feels… uncoordinated.
That's not uncommon; some of these smaller or newer firms seem to be making up the compliance process as they go along, or just haven't invested in decent back-office systems.