From http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/accounts/accountProtection.php?ib_entity=llc Customer securities accounts at Interactive Brokers are protected up to $30 million (including up to $1 million for cash). The market value of your stocks, options, warrants, debt, and cash -- denominated in all currencies -- is covered by this insurance. Futures, options on futures, and single stock futures are not covered, but available cash will be swept from your futures account to your securities account periodically to take advantage of insurance coverage as much as possible. As with all securities firms, this insurance provides protection against failure of a broker-dealer, not against loss of market value of securities. This protection is provided by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) and Lloydâs of London insurers. SIPC provides the first $500,000 per customer (including up to $100,000 for cash). For customers who have received the full SIPC protection, the Lloydâs policy provides up to an additional $29.5 million (including $900,000 for cash), subject to an aggregate limit of $150 million. For the purpose of determining a customer account, accounts with like names and titles (e.g. Individual/John Smith and Individual/John Smith) are combined, but accounts with different titles are not (e.g. Individual/John Smith and IRA/John Smith).
I have been with IB for 5 years, and this is the first time I heard about this. Good info! Is every universal account covered by Lloydâs policy?
I would suggest that you spend some time reading the wealth of information on the IB website. More financial information about IB is contained in their quarterly earnings reports and can be found using the SEC's EDGAR system.
the info that started this thread is not correct. you can't take a treasury in your name and put it in a brokerage account and trade against it. IN ORDER TO TRADE USING THE TREASURY AS COLLATERAL IT MUST BE IN STREET NAME. thats the only way the broker can liquidate it if you got a margin call and can extend you margin against it. the advantage of putting your money in a treasury and trading against it is its considered a security and not cash so you get the 500k sipc protection at all times and not just 100k as your cash sits there. they need to rasie the sipc cash portion to 500k as 100k cash is nothing. many old timers have millions in mer accounts and little do they know they're not insured
Based on your post then having T-Bill rather than cash would also take care of the problem if trading futures etc the insurance does not apply since all of the funds are considered to be security and you'd be trading futures using borrowed money?