FMA Austria

The FMA keeps a company database of every entity it has licensed, from banks and insurers to investment fund management companies, pension funds and exchange operators. The search shows whether a company holds an Austrian license and which services the license covers. The FMA app puts the company database, the list of tied agents and the current investor warnings on a phone.

Funds have their own searches, in which the FMA lists the Austrian and foreign UCITS and alternative investment funds that may be sold in Austria. Before any investment, the FMA advises checking both the company database and the investor warnings.

The FMA publishes investor warnings about firms that offer financial services in Austria without the required license. In 2021 it published 112 such warnings, most of them about online trading platforms that acted fraudulently. The FMA also warns about clones that copy the name of a licensed firm and about invented supervisors that fraudsters cite on their websites.

The MiCA-VVG made the FMA the competent authority for MiCA in Austria, and the authority grants authorizations under Article 63 of the regulation. The ESMA register of 16 October 2026 lists 12 Austrian providers, among them Bitpanda, which received its authorization on 9 April 2025. Bybit EU, WhiteBIT EU and BingX EU also run their European business from Vienna, and the FMA authorized MEGE zweite GmbH, the company behind BingX EU, on 13 October 2026.

The FMA enforces the conditions of these authorizations against firms that no longer meet them. On 19 February 2026 it banned KuCoin EU from taking on new business because the posts of the anti-money laundering officer and the sanctions compliance officer were empty, and it lifted the ban on 18 May 2026 after the firm had filled them. In a separate notice, the FMA explained the ESMA expectations for services with stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA.

The FinTech point of contact of the FMA answers questions on licensing, prospectus duties, compliance and anti-money laundering rules for new business models. Its FinTech Navigator explains the rules for topics such as crowdfunding, digital payments, automated advice and initial coin offerings.

Article 23a of the Financial Market Authority Act created the regulatory sandbox of the FMA, which has been open since 1 September 2020. Start-ups and supervised firms can test business models based on information technology under FMA supervision, and the FMA publishes a short summary of each admitted model. The first participant planned an app for trading security tokens, digital securities based on blockchain technology.

Helmut Ettl has been an executive director of the FMA since 2008, after heading the banking analysis and inspections division of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank. Mariana Kühnel joined him on the executive board in July 2025 and was previously deputy secretary general of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, after senior positions at Erste Group Bank.

In June 2026 the Oesterreichische Nationalbank nominated Oliver Schütz, head of bank resolution at the FMA, to succeed Helmut Ettl from 1 November 2026. Helmut Ettl is to move to the International Monetary Fund as an executive director from 1 November 2026. Under the Financial Market Authority Act, the finance minister and the national bank each nominate one of the two executive directors.

The FMA has its offices at Otto-Wagner-Platz 5 in 1090 Vienna, and the switchboard answers on +43 1 249 59 0. Consumer complaints go to the department for consumer information and complaints at the same address, together with the reply that the complaints department of the firm concerned sent.

For questions about fintech business models and licensing, the FMA asks people to use its dedicated contact forms, because it cannot answer other channels directly. Its 17th supervisory conference brought supervisors, politicians and the financial industry together to discuss the resilience and competitiveness of finance in Europe.