Alternatives to Interactive Brokers??

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Comptalk

I wanted to switch from Scottrade to Interactive Brokers, however, my account has been in "compliance" for nearly 10 days, 7 business. They will not give my any updates and said it should be approved sooner rather than later.

Anyone have any recommendations to alternatives to Interactive Brokers? This wait is ridiculous.
 
Your wait is not uncommon. Some institutional accounts we open require risk and background checks and can take much longer.
 
We are Introducing Brokers to Merrill Lynch Professional and Penson Financial and provide a variety of solutions for Hedge Funds, Trading Groups and Active Traders.

We offer our clients the ability to trade Equities, Options, Futures and FX through several broker neutral platforms. We customize our offering to the client's needs.

Send me an e-mail if you like more information.

Bob
 

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Quote from rmorse:

Your wait is not uncommon. Some institutional accounts we open require risk and background checks and can take much longer.
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Why would anyone want or need a background check or risk analysis before opening a retail account?
 
Yea, that doesn't make much sense. I deposited 10k in my account a week ago. Still, under review? I've had accounts with other institutions, never had to wait this long. This is nuts. Hence the reason why I would like some suggestions on other brokers similar to Interactive Brokers. I trade mostly in options.
 
Quote from tenthousandmen:

Why would anyone want or need a background check or risk analysis before opening a retail account?
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You and many traders here use the term "Retail" for non broker dealer accounts. A "Retail" account is an account in an individual's name, that is not a broker dealer, not registered with a broker dealer, and in the persons name. An institutional account is a non broker dealer account in the name of an entity. Retail accounts can be $500MM and a institutional account can be $10K.

We only offer institutional account (Yes our min. are higher than $10K) and as Introducing Brokers we have a compliance responsibility to know the entity and people involved. We are also first loss after the account holder, so we care who we do business with and how they trade. Big swings and lots of margin calls are not what we want. Anyone sanctioned by the SEC or Finra would give us pause.
 
Quote from Comptalk:

Yea, that doesn't make much sense. I deposited 10k in my account a week ago. Still, under review? I've had accounts with other institutions, never had to wait this long. This is nuts. Hence the reason why I would like some suggestions on other brokers similar to Interactive Brokers. I trade mostly in options.
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I seem to recall that some of the delay is due to anti-money laundering regulations. It's been awhile since I've opened a non-IB account so I can't recall how long it took, but a week to fund an IB account is not out of the ordinary. Perhaps they have stricter guidelines that they follow compared to other brokers (they are the only broker that I've ever used that has the security card thing, for example).

TOS is probably a good alternative since their platform is awesome for options, but you're not going to get the best commissions (I think it's like $1.95/contract). It seems like some people feel the platform has gone downhill since TDA took over, but I haven't really noticed any difference.
 
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