Pandora’s Question
An Advisor of ours posed the question, “In light of the Equifax issues, have we experienced any problems with opening new brokerage accounts?”
My immediate response would have been, “Negative” just because I hadn’t been having any problems with accounts. But to be certain that the accounts I have been working on were not the exception, I called TDA, Fidelity and Schwab to find out. All three reported that there have not been any such issues and there are no expected issues as the breach with Equifax does not affect that process. They did state that a few of their account holders have elected to step up security on their accounts with things like Restrictions on TDA accounts, additional passwords on Schwab accounts and Dual Authentication on Fidelity accounts.
My thoughts here are that there is NOT a glut of instances out there where accounts are being opened fraudulently or existing accounts being hacked. Rather that, at least in the case of the three mentioned custodians, have a pretty fair set of systems in place to protect your clients.
I hope you find this information helpful!
Copyright 2017 James Carnahan
