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Compensation scheme caps against account size: €20,000 and £85,000 worked on balances

This is arithmetic about a limit, not a prediction about any broker.

Under the CySEC Investor Compensation Fund, eligible non-professional clients of a Cyprus regulated firm are covered for the lower of 90% of the covered claim or €20,000. That applies only if the firm can't return client money or instruments. It doesn't cover trading losses.

Balance of €5,000: 90% is €4,500, under the cap, so €4,500 or 90%.
Balance of €15,000: €13,500, still 90%.
Balance of €22,222: 90% is €20,000, and that's where the cap starts to bind.
Balance of €30,000: capped at €20,000, which is 66.7% of the balance.
Balance of €60,000: €20,000, or 33.3%.

In the UK, the FSCS page states a limit of £85,000 per person per firm for investment claims. A balance of £40,000 is fully inside the limit and £85,000 is too. A balance of £120,000 has 85,000 / 120,000 = 70.8% inside it.

Two checks matter more than the cap. The first is which legal entity your account is with, since a brand can have several entities in different countries with different schemes. The second is that these schemes pay out when a firm fails, so they don't change the risk of a strategy. Think of them as part of deciding how much to keep with one broker, and check the figure on the scheme's own site, since limits get revised.

Where to find your entity: the account agreement and the footer of the broker's website list the company name, its registration number and the regulator. Look at the one in your client agreement, not the one in the advertisement. If it says a company in Cyprus, then the ICF or its equivalent applies, if it says a UK company authorised by the FCA, then FSCS rules apply, and if it's an offshore entity, the schemes may not apply at all. That's information you can collect in ten minutes and it's more useful than reading reviews about the broker's reputation.

A rough way to think about it is a table of balance by broker. Suppose your trading capital is €45,000. With one Cyprus regulated broker you would have a covered maximum of €20,000 of it, which is 44%. Split €15,000 across three brokers, each under the 90% region, and the covered amount on each is €13,500, so €40,500 in total, 90%. Splitting has costs, like margin spread across accounts and more admin, and not every trader wants it. But it's the arithmetic of what the cap means for balance size.

The 90% applies to the covered claim, not to whatever your equity was on a good day, and the claim is worked out as of the date the firm fails. The compensation process can also take a long time, so it isn't a substitute for withdrawing profits regularly. If you've made a gain that you don't need as margin, moving it to your bank is the simplest protection that doesn't rely on any scheme. As a habit: on the first of each month, compare balance with margin used, and withdraw the part that nothing is using, keeping a note of the amount.

For prop traders the question can look different, since the funds sit with the firm, and your payout may be an unsecured claim against the prop company. A compensation scheme for brokerage clients won't usually apply to that. Read the contract on who holds the capital and what happens to a pending payout if the firm closes. I don't have a number to give, and I'd rather say so than guess. The practical step is to request payouts as soon as they're allowed and to keep a record of what's owed.