How to choose a CRM for your brokerage: a buyer's checklist

A brokerage changes CRM rarely, and usually because the last one stopped fitting: payments were bolted on, IB commission lived in a spreadsheet, or every new region meant a new tool. The cost of choosing badly is not the licence; it is the months spent working around the gaps. These are the twelve questions we suggest putting to any vendor, ourselves included, with what a good answer looks like. Each one links to how RedCherry handles it, so you can hold us to the same standard.

Before you start: write down your must-haves

Demos are designed to impress, so decide what matters before the first one. Write down the regions you serve or plan to, the trading platforms and servers you run, the payment providers you already have contracts with, your KYC provider if you have one, how your partner program pays and how many staff will use the system in each team. Then mark which of the questions below are deal-breakers for your business and which are nice to have. A new brokerage launching in one region weighs them differently from an established one moving thousands of clients and a large IB network.

1. Does onboarding and KYC run inside the portal?

A good answer is a sign-up flow where identity, face and address checks run as steps in the client portal through an integrated provider, with verification levels that unlock deposits and withdrawals separately. A weak answer is a document upload form and a manual queue. Ask which providers are integrated and what happens to a flagged case. RedCherry's onboarding and KYC module runs Sumsub, Shufti Pro and Didit inside the flow.

2. How do wallets and payment gateways work?

Look for multi-currency wallets that every gateway credits, fees shown to the client before they pay, withdrawal approval rules per method and reconciliation against the gateway's report without a spreadsheet. Ask how many gateways are already integrated and how a new one is added for one country. RedCherry integrates twelve, described on the wallets and payments page.

3. How deep is the trading platform integration?

Account creation from the CRM when a client qualifies, groups and leverage set without the manager terminal, and balance, equity and positions syncing in real time are the baseline. Ask which platforms are live today and which are on the roadmap, and whether several servers can be connected. RedCherry works with MetaTrader 4 and 5 today, with TradeLocker and cTrader coming soon; see trading platforms.

4. Can it run a multi-level IB program?

Ask how many IB levels are supported, whether commission can be set per level by volume or lots, whether CPA and hybrid deals run in the same program, and what partners see in their own portal. If the answer involves exporting trades to calculate commission, keep looking. RedCherry's IB management module has no level limit and a branded partner area.

5. Is there one back office with real roles?

Every team, compliance, finance, sales, partner management and support, should work from one back office on one client record, with roles that decide exactly which pages and actions each person can use. Ask to see a withdrawal from request to approval, and who can see what along the way. RedCherry's admin dashboard is organised around those queues.

6. Is reporting live, and does it drill down?

Management numbers should come from the same data the operations team works in, not from a nightly export, and every figure should open the transactions behind it. Ask for deposits by gateway and country, onboarding conversion by step and commission by IB. See reporting and analytics.

7. Are the client portal and app white-label?

Clients should see your brand on your domain, in their language, on web and on a phone, and never a vendor's name. Ask what can be configured without a developer: sign-up fields, documents per country, notifications, banners. RedCherry's client area and mobile app carry your brand throughout.

8. Will the security satisfy your regulator?

Ask about encryption in transit and at rest, two-factor sign-in for staff, IP restrictions, roles and permissions, and an audit log that records who changed what and when. Ask whether the vendor will complete your security questionnaire. RedCherry's controls are described on the security page.

9. What does support look like after go-live?

Brokerages trade around the clock and payment problems do not wait for office hours. Ask when support is available, how emergencies are handled and who you talk to. RedCherry provides technical and emergency support 24/7; common questions are answered in the Help Center.

10. Does the pricing punish growth?

Watch for setup fees, prices per active client and integrations charged one by one. A brokerage should be able to grow its client base without renegotiating. Ask what is included in each plan and what is an add-on. RedCherry has zero setup fees and unlimited active clients on every plan; the comparison is on the pricing page.

11. How does migration work?

Your clients, leads, IB structures and trading accounts already exist somewhere. Ask who maps the fields, how IB hierarchies and commission rules are rebuilt, how existing trading accounts are linked and how staff are trained before the switch. The broker CRM page describes how a move to RedCherry runs.

12. What happens when you need something new?

Every brokerage eventually needs a provider or a workflow nobody planned for. Ask whether the vendor builds custom integrations, how they are scoped and priced, and whether there is an API with webhooks for your own systems. RedCherry scopes custom integrations and offers API access on the Enterprise plan; the connections available today are listed under Integrations & API.

Warning signs in a demo

• Answers that start with 'we can build that' for something your brokerage needs on day one
• A demo that only shows the back office, never the client portal or the partner area your clients and IBs will use
• Commission or bonus calculations that happen in an export rather than in the system
• No clear answer on who owns the data and how you would get it out
• Setup fees or per-client pricing that only appear late in the conversation

Who should be in the room

A CRM is used by every team, so the evaluation should not be left to one. Bring compliance to the KYC questions, finance to payments and reconciliation, the partner manager to the IB program and support to the ticketing and the client portal. Each of them will spot in ten minutes what a general demo hides, and each will have to live with the choice. Their scores, added up, are a better guide than any single impression.

A scorecard for your shortlist

• Score each vendor from 0 to 2 on each of the twelve questions: 0 for missing, 1 for possible with work, 2 for working today
• Ask every vendor to show the answer in a live demo rather than a slide
• Weight the questions by your own priorities, for example payments and KYC for a new brokerage, IB management for a partner-led one
• Check two references who run a business like yours

Where to go next

If you are comparing options, the use cases show how brokerages in common situations put RedCherry to work, and the about page describes the team behind it. When you are ready, book a demo and bring this checklist; we will answer each question on the platform itself.