Safe money is important. The Independent Financial Group does not take custody of client assets at any time; nor does IFG have access to client assets; nor does IFG receive any compensation or incentives of any description from the custodians selected. Client accounts are opened in the client’s name at an independent third-party custodial firm which takes physical custody of client assets.
SEI Private Trust Company
Safety First: Have you ever asked yourself why your bank carries FDIC insurance? Why virtually all investment firms carry SIPC plus additional insurance? The simple answer is they have to. You see, the money – your money – is held in the institution’s name, not yours.
It’s referred to as holding assets in “street name”. The money is actually an asset of the firm that can be attached by creditors if the institution should fail, leaving insurance to cover, up to a limit, investor losses. Remember the 2008-9 credit melt-down when banks and firms that were too big to fail actually did? Insurers were unable to cover all investor losses because the institutions were using client money for leverage while using insurance to protect the clients.
At SEI, assets are not held in street name. They are not an asset of the firm because the investments are held at an independent trust company in the investor’s name, and subject to more regulatory scrutiny than the typical brokerage/custodian firm. If the firm goes bankrupt, creditors have no claim on the investments–they’re owned by the investors in trust, not as assets of the custodian firm. That alone is worth some thought.
SEI
SEI, founded in 1968, is one of the world’s largest providers of wealth management solutions, with over 5,000 employees and $1.3 trillion in assets (as of September 30, 2023) and offices in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, India, Luxembourg, South Africa, and United Kingdom. Through times of radical change, SEI has been a constant in the financial services industry. SEI has never been bought or sold, and, despite their growth, has been at the forefront of innovation. They’ve been able to take a complex business model and make the processes simple for the end-investor. SEI also has an impressive stable of well-known institutional and corporate clients with which they work closely, in the same fiduciary capacity that I serve you.
And, you’ll love SEI’s technology.
The smart way to manage:
- Your advisor is independent of the asset custodian. IFG receives no compensation from Pershing.
- Your reporting is objective, provided by independent third parties not related to IFG.
- There are no ‘revenue-sharing’ or ‘back-door’ compensation arrangements.
- All charges and compensation are transparent.
To put it bluntly: IFG is not in a position to “cook the books” or put it’s hand in the cookie jar. The independent model simply makes sense.
If this all makes sense to you, IFG may provide the ‘right-fit’ advisory model to help plan your future.
Ready to get started! You can get the ball rolling here!
