Are you covered by SIPC or only by the UK equivalent if you have an account with Interactive Brokers UK? Thank you. (Yes, I could ask IB, but first I just want to check in case the answer is self-evident.)
Every brokerage, especially a large one, is governed by the country that it is in. I do not believe SIPC would apply if you hold the funds in a UK bank or institution.
Don't worry, you won't lose any money if IB goes under, because they won't. All you have to do is read their quarterly financials and monthly metrics. SIPC is almost worthless anyway, it would take years before you get your money back. I think SIPC is just a marketing tool for brokerage industry. So just be careful who you do business with.
You don’t even have to ask IB. Simply go to their website and scroll to the bottom of the page. There you’ll find a description on how each subsidiary is regulated. That includes the subsidiary in the UK.
Everyone said that about Enron before it went under. And Bear Sterns before it went under. And Worldcom before it went under. And any of hundreds of other firms that unexpectedly went bankrupt. The whole point of an unexpected bankruptcy is that it's unexpected! Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.
You'll know when IB is going bankrupt when its stock price is less than $1. Til then, the odds of what you are suggesting are extremely low.
That wasn't actually the case for the examples I cited or hundreds of others. There are two kinds of bankruptcy, the SHLD kind that is obvious for some time and the unexpected kind due to some kind of external shock to the financial system (i.e. Bear Stearns) or fraud in the financial statements. I'm not in any way suggesting that I suspect IB is engaged in financial statement fraud or that we have a systemic financial shock imminent. However I am quite adamantly insisting that by their very nature both are unknowable until after it's too late to do anything about it. To think otherwise is to ignore history, much of it very recent.