XTB will compensate victims of cybercrime. New standards for investor protection
The XTB platform is introducing an unprecedented policy to protect customers affected by attacks by cyber criminals. The broker has announced that it will fully cover losses suffered by investors as a result of unauthorized access to accounts – regardless of whether it is formally responsible for the data leak.
XTB to compensate victims of cybercrimes
The broker’s decision came as a consequence of the growing scale of cyber security threats – according to CERT Polska, there were more than 103,000 online security breaches in 2024, 29% more than the year before. Attacks on the financial sector have increased not only in Poland, but across the European Union, as confirmed by the European Central Bank.
According to data collected by XTB, incidents of lost funds affected only 0.017% of customers, and all incidents occurred in accounts without two-factor authentication (2FA) activated.
In the words of Omar Arnaout, CEO of XTB:
Our strategy is to offer the best investment application for managing investments both passively and actively. We want our clients to have confidence that they can invest safely in the XTB app with long-term goals or additional retirement in mind. Building a relationship based on trust is of the utmost importance to us, which is why we made the decision to compensate funds to all our clients who fell victim to cyber criminals.
The company said it would contact affected customers individually for prompt refunds. At the same time, it points out that the scale of compensation will not significantly affect its financial performance.
At the same time, intensive efforts are underway to strengthen security. In July, XTB introduced a new authentication method based on Time-Based-One-Time-Password (TOTP) codes, allowing users to use codes generated, for example, in the Google Authenticator application. The process of mandatory implementation of 2FA among all customers in Poland is nearing completion and will soon be extended to other countries, with 2FA being activated by default on all customers’ accounts starting in Q4.
XTB’s security budget has increased by 48% in 2024, and the company is planning further technology investments in the coming years. Upcoming solutions will include the ability to instantly log out of all sessions and remote account locking from within the app.
