Declawed in China, UP Fintech faces challenges in global marketplace

The Tiger Brokers operator has been forced to leave its original home market, but numbers show its global expansion isn’t strong enough yet to carry the business

Key Takeaways:

• Legacy Mainland China clients still accounted for more than 20% of UP Fintech’s first quarter revenue, despite years of efforts to expand internationally
• Now based in Singapore after relocating from its original home in Beijing, the online brokerage faces a key challenge in appealing to clients with no Chinese ties

By Warren Yang

UP Fintech Holding Ltd. (TIGR.US) has finally put three years of regulatory turbulence in China behind it, but it isn’t clear skies for the online brokerage just yet. Now completely severed from its original home market, the company faces a high-stakes race to prove it can grow on foreign soil – especially beyond its core base of users with Chinese backgrounds.

UP Fintech’s latest quarterly results, released last week, are a bit of a mixed bag that show both promising signs and challenges for the company in its new 2.0 era.

Firstly, the elephant in the room. The company was fined 411.2 million yuan ($60 million) by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) last month for operating an unlicensed business allowing Mainland-based traders to buy stocks in overseas markets like the U.S. and Hong Kong. This dragged its bottom line into the red, as the company, best known for its Tiger Brokers online trading platform, booked a net loss of $26.9 million in the first quarter.

This financial wound is deep, for sure. But it’s also conclusive, ending several years of uncertainty for the company. With a multi-year existential threat from Chinese regulators now in the past as a fixed, nonrecurring charge, the company can finally move forward without worrying about the potential for more problems on the Mainland.

“We have fully accounted for this amount in our first quarter results,” UP Fintech CFO John Zeng said on the company’s earnings call with analysts, referring to the CSRC fine. “This is a one-time nonrecurring charge and will not have a material impact on our core business and overall financial health.”

The CSRS also mandated that UP Fintech and rival Futu (FUTU.US) must wind down their original Mainland businesses. That means the pair now have no choice but to go global.

Originally based in Beijing, UP Fintech started out offering trading services for customers in Mainland China buying U.S.- and Hong Kong-listed stocks. But it now calls Singapore home, and gets a majority of its business from other markets outside the Chinese Mainland.

Living on borrowed time

Even before the CSRC dealt the final blow, both UP Fintech and Futu had been living on borrowed time. The regulator ordered the brokerages to stop registering new domestic clients three years ago while allowing them to maintain existing ones. This gave them some time to accelerate their international expansion, which both had previously begun after earlier trouble signs first emerged.

The pivot has been largely successful, though it was a forced one. At the close of the first quarter of 2026, Mainland retail clients represented just 10% of UP Fintech’s total client assets. Furthermore, management noted that about 90% of its net asset inflows came from outside the Chinese Mainland.

Yet, exiting China completely does create a pretty big vacuum that must be filled. UP Fintech management said Mainland clients accounted for more than 20% of its total revenue in the first quarter, double their percentage of the company’s overall client base. This indicates that Mainland-based customers are more lucrative than those in the company’s overseas markets as they trade more frequently, use more leverage for margin trading and use higher-fee products like options and futures.

UP Fintech’s revenue increased about 26% year-on-year to $155 million in the three months to March. But the removal of contributions from clients in China would have pretty much wiped out all of that top-line growth.

To plug this substantial revenue hole, UP Fintech is accelerating its international expansion, targeting mature economies like its new base in Singapore, as well as Hong Kong, Australia and even the U.S.

Finite niche

Yet the company is still having a bit of an identity problem — can it truly transcend its roots as the operator of a Chinese-language stock trading platform? For years, both UP Fintech and Futu followed the wealth migration of the global Chinese diaspora. But while these demographics are highly profitable and like to trade, they represent a finite niche.

To truly scale into an international heavy hitter capable of rivaling Western low-cost digital brokerages like Robinhood Markets (HOOD.US) and Interactive Brokers (IBKR.US), the two must prove they can acquire retail clients that have no Chinese ties.

Futu recognized this early on. It separated its international identity from its domestic brand by launching “moomoo,” a heavily promoted, fully English-native app backed by aggressive marketing campaigns.

Moomoo has even begun pushing the boundaries of its offerings. Just last week, it announced a partnership with Kalshi to introduce features that allow U.S. users to trade on prediction markets, which include things like election outcomes and macro-economic data. While this may look like a slightly desperate attempt to compete in a crowded market, it highlights Futu’s willingness to experiment aggressively to appeal to mainstream U.S. investors

UP Fintech, by contrast, has largely kept its international operations under its core “Tiger Trade” banner. While its app is available in a fully English version, its marketing and product features have historically leaned on its strength in global Chinese wealth centers.

The company is trying to move past that, however, with some notable achievements. For one, in the U.S., it pulled off an impressive 40% quarter-over-quarter increase in client assets in the first quarter, as well as double-digit sequential growth in Australia and New Zealand. But that comes with a cost. UP Fintech’s operating expenses jumped 33% year-over-year in the first quarter, outpacing its revenue growth, in large part because of marketing spending.

In addition to chasing retail investors, UP Fintech is targeting business customers. In the first quarter, it added 42 new employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) corporate clients, bringing its total institutional roster to 790. Moreover, its investment banking division helped to underwrite 10 Hong Kong IPOs during the quarter.

But all those positive signals failed to impress investors, many still worried about its eviction from Mainland China. Its shares dropped nearly 4% on the day of the results announcement, and the stock is now down about 20% from where it traded before the CSRC’s decision. The stock trades at a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of about 1.4, a far cry from 18 for Robinhood and even the 3.6 for Interactive Brokers. And Webull (BULL.US), which similarly targets traders with Chinese backgrounds, also trades at a much higher ratio of 5.3.

UP Fintech’s progress in its international expansion campaign so far is promising. But to take its global game to the next level and win over investors, it may need to deliver more results that convincingly show it can find business outside its original strength targeting traders with Chinese backgrounds.

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