[IB] Freezing your account for their benefit

[spyderman]

Quote from Benign:

That is a very horrible story in my opinion. How come IB held your money for so long? It makes me think IB is a wrong choice. Does IB implement this "security" so as to discourage you from withdrawing money?

After years of making consistant monthly withdrawls which have equalled many times the original account value without a hitch, I look at this story with skepticism. On the other hand, I will value and appreciate any delays on IB's end if at any time a withdrawl or transfer request for a LARGE percentage of the account is made in the (unlikely?) event that there is fraud involved.

I do admit I'm not fond of carrying that token around when mobile trading however.......

 

[OldTrader]

Quote from spyderman:

After years of making consistant monthly withdrawls which have equalled many times the original account value without a hitch, I look at this story with skepticism. On the other hand, I will value and appreciate any delays on IB's end if at any time a withdrawl or transfer request for a LARGE percentage of the account is made in the (unlikely?) event that there is fraud involved.

I do admit I'm not fond of carrying that token around when mobile trading however.......

Yeah, can you imagine the wail that would have gone up had someone actually managed to get MidKnight's money transferred out to an account with his name on it that was actually controlled by a crook? LOL.

One way create a problem with a wire transfer is to CHANGE where you want your wire to go. Red flags go up since this is apt to be one way security is breached. IB addresses this on their website.

This guy says he made an error filling out the form. Damn tough to do. I should know, I've been filling these forms out for years with no difficulty. Maybe he changed his wire destination and made an error. Hard to say. Whatever HE DID shut the process down. And I for one am glad that IB is conservative regarding wiring money out.

That said, I do think IB should have some type of process to correct a situation of this type where a problem can be corrected more quickly. Because it becomes clear after a while that some people just can't read, can't fill forms out correctly, etc etc. There are bound to be errors, and again, there should be a method to correct these without sacrificing security for the rest of us.

OldTrader

 

[rayl]

My opinion still stands as follows: While many of the woes have elements of implausibility, and I generally side with IB, it does bother me that IB does not have a time definite absolute fail-safe backup mechanism for customers. An example might be:

A letter of instruction specifying account registration, account number, amount, and destination wire instructions, with a medallion signature guarantee will be processed on the day of receipt if both NYSE and Fed Reserve banking systems are open for business, or the first day thereafter when this condition is met.

This guarantees a maximum delay of one day to overnight a medallion signature guaranteed letter. I believe all mutual fund transfer agents work this way. I have seen a policy in the securities industry where a medallion signature guarantee is not accepted as absolute proof of authenticity of instructions. (Well, FedWire Funds terminals w/encryption chips, but I did say securities industry, not banking industry!)

I have no beef with IB but I do keep primary liquidity elsewhere, partially because of slightly higher yields but also because I have no assurance that it really is liquid at IB!

 

[MidKnight]

Quote from Benign:

That is a very horrible story in my opinion. How come IB held your money for so long? It makes me think IB is a wrong choice. Does IB implement this "security" so as to discourage you from withdrawing money?

I'm paraphrasing IB mgmt response, but it was generally that is slipped through the cracks. I've been assured from IB mgmt that the internal processes have been modified so that this doesn't happen again.

Once I could finally contact management, the problem was resolved very promptly - I am appreciative of that.

As I have said before, this wasn't intended to be an IB is bad and IB is good posting thread. This was strictly a documentation of my experience of which the net effect was a frozen account that I could not get unfrozen and could not contact mgmt to do so. The normal support channels were ineffectual and no alternative for other channels was made available to me until I posted this thread.

Best regards,
MK

 

[OldTrader]

Quote from MidKnight:

As I have said before, this wasn't intended to be an IB is bad and IB is good posting thread.
MK

You did say at one point that IB had "stolen" your money. This seems to fit the "IB is bad" side of the equation.
OldTrader

 

[zdreg]

Quote from rayl:

My opinion still stands as follows: While many of the woes have elements of implausibility, and I generally side with IB, it does bother me that IB does not have a time definite absolute fail-safe backup mechanism for customers. An example might be:

A letter of instruction specifying account registration, account number, amount, and destination wire instructions, with a medallion signature guarantee will be processed on the day of receipt if both NYSE and Fed Reserve banking systems are open for business, or the first day thereafter when this condition is met.

This guarantees a maximum delay of one day to overnight a medallion signature guaranteed letter. I believe all mutual fund transfer agents work this way. I have seen a policy in the securities industry where a medallion signature guarantee is not accepted as absolute proof of authenticity of instructions. (Well, FedWire Funds terminals w/encryption chips, but I did say securities industry, not banking industry!)

I have no beef with IB but I do keep primary liquidity elsewhere, partially because of slightly higher yields but also because I have no assurance that it really is liquid at IB!

the goal is to get away from the use of paper and wasting of customer time to get papers and send them which could take weeks to go through the full cycle and to automate as much as possible. IB learned a good lesson from the Midknight fiasco because midknight brought to light internal organizational weaknesses. IB and all of us should be thankful that he started this thread.
be sure as a result of senior management becoming involved this fiasco will not be repeated and proper procedures have been implemented.. in this regard IB can be trusted.

 

[MidKnight]

Quote from OldTrader:

You did say at one point that IB had "stolen" your money. This seems to fit the "IB is bad" side of the equation.
OldTrader

What else do you call it when someone takes your money and won't give it back regardless of your requests? That was how it felt at the time. I'm not going to argue it with you. You are entitled to your opinion of what I said and I am entitled to mine. Should you get your entire trading account frozen for X amount of weeks, I will be interested to hear what you call it.

 

[MidKnight]

I agree zdreg. I doubt this event will occur again with IB as the numerous emails I had from IB mgmt have emphasized this to me.

Best regards,
MK

 

[chauncey1]

Money is liquid at IB.

I transferred up to 1.5M in one day without no problem, even recently from different accounts, so liquidity is not an issue.

Its usual that traders thinks the world are against them and that the broker for some reason wants to fuck you for some reason.
The truth is that none is such important, i do have the freeze problem once editing a wire transfer. Its really annoying and got fixed in 48hs after i spoke with someone in funds and banking.
Of course IB don-t want to keep the money of one individual investor, they have an stupid system without plan B in case you did something they think is wrong.

The problem came up with their stupid security protocols totally different to the rest of the brokers, and if you cant adapt to them, then you will feel the pain. Pretty annoying, but once you have everything set, it works really good.

So, its hard to say if it is good or is a shit, it may work for some people and don-t for others, so, there is no absolute answer on that.
I continue choosing IB and using it, but i understand that no all the people have the same patience and its OK.

PS. They should have a plan B like the other guy say with some letter of instruction or something else.

 

[OldTrader]

Quote from MidKnight:

What else do you call it when someone takes your money and won't give it back regardless of your requests? That was how it felt at the time. I'm not going to argue it with you. You are entitled to your opinion of what I said and I am entitled to mine. Should you get your entire trading account frozen for X amount of weeks, I will be interested to hear what you call it.

Maybe what you need to understand is how this all got started. Then maybe you can understand that it was a breakdown in the process.

By the way, this breakdown in the process would not have happened had you followed the instructions correctly. IB simply needs a better process in place to deal with those who can't follow simple instructions.

OldTrader