Interactive Brokers Group Strength and Security
When placing your money with a broker, you need to make sure your broker is secure and can endure through good and bad times. The financial statements of Interactive Brokers LLC are available on our website for your review. Note that Interactive Brokers LLC and its affiliates* are owned by IBG LLC.
- We currently hold $4.8 billion in equity capital.
- We handle over 1,000,000 trades per day.
- Interactive Brokers conducts its broker/dealer and proprietary trading businesses on over 80 market destinations.
- We have been in the trading business for 33 years.
- We have always been at the forefront of trading innovation, starting with the invention of the first floor-based handheld computer in 1983.
- Customers are protected by $30 million of SIPC and Lloyd's of London securities account protection.
- Our real-time margin system continuously enforces limits for each account, and automatically liquidates positions if any individual account violates its limits at any time.
- All orders are automatically vetted on a pre-trade basis.
- We do not hold CDOs, Subprime Debt, or Credit Default Swaps.
- With the exception of foreign exchange, we trade only exchange listed products that are cleared through central clearing houses and are marked daily to external closing prices disseminated by the exchanges.
- Positions and resulting payables/receivables are automatically reconciled against external sources daily.
As a regulated broker, IB is subject to SEC and CFTC regulations on investment
of customer funds. Permissible investment vehicles include bank deposits and
a variety of top-rated government securities and related instruments. IB’s
effective investment policy is more stringent than this, reflecting our risk-averse
philosophy. We invest customer funds only in government securities and repos,
FDIC-backed corporate bonds, cash deposits in bank accounts at the largest
banks and triple A-rated Money Market Funds (in which we invest less than 2%
of customer assets).
Additionally, we limit customer exposure through the following credit policies:
- Keeping investments in highly liquid, short-term instruments.
- Distributing client funds among a variety of banks and counterparties to avoid concentrated exposure to any single counterparty.
- Rigorous analysis by our Credit Committee of Counterparty Financial Conditions as well as review of risk factors prior to permitting investment activity with or via any counterparty.
IB’s investment policy is very conservative. Our strict policies when investing client money minimizes our and your exposure in uncertain credit environments.