Interactive Brokers

Licences in the UK, Ireland, Australia and Singapore were confirmed on the regulators’ registers and the US broker-dealer on FINRA BrokerCheck. The group discloses licensed companies in Canada, Hong Kong, Japan and India, and lists no subsidiary in an offshore jurisdiction.

• StrengthInteractive Brokers (U.K.) Limited has been authorised by the FCA since 6 February 2002 (FRN 208159), and Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited is authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland as a MiFID investment firm (reference C423427).
• StrengthInteractive Brokers Australia Pty Ltd holds ASIC licence AFSL 453554, and Interactive Brokers Singapore Pte. Ltd. is a Capital Markets Services licensee in the MAS directory.
• StrengthInteractive Brokers LLC is a FINRA member and SEC-registered broker-dealer (SEC file 8-47257), and a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and NFA member.
• StrengthThe list of subsidiaries filed with the 2025 annual report names companies in the US, Ireland, the UK, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, India, Switzerland, China and Hungary, and none in an offshore jurisdiction.
• ObservationThe licences of the Canadian, Hong Kong, Japanese and Indian companies are taken from the firm’s own disclosures.

The parent, Interactive Brokers Group, Inc., is listed on Nasdaq and files audited annual reports and quarterly reports with the SEC. It is controlled by its founder and chairman, Thomas Peterffy, through IBG Holdings LLC.

• StrengthInteractive Brokers Group, Inc. filed its annual report on Form 10-K for 2025 on 27 February 2026 and its quarterly report for the period to 30 June 2026 on 6 August 2026.
• ObservationAt 31 December 2025 the listed company owned about 26.3% of the operating holding company, IBG LLC, and IBG Holdings LLC owned the remaining 73.7%; Mr Peterffy and his affiliates held about 91.6% of IBG Holdings LLC.

US clients are covered by SIPC, UK clients by the FSCS, Irish clients by Ireland’s Investor Compensation Scheme and Canadian clients by the Canadian Investor Protection Fund, and the firm describes daily segregation of client money. In 2024 FINRA found that the US broker had created segregation deficits of about $30 million in customer securities.

• StrengthInteractive Brokers LLC is a SIPC member; Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited states it is a member of the Irish Investor Compensation Scheme and Interactive Brokers Canada Inc. that it is a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
• StrengthThe firm states that it has performed the SEC reserve computation for client money daily rather than weekly since December 2011, and that about 89% of client funds is invested in short-term US Treasury securities and reverse repurchase agreements, with the rest held in segregated bank and custody accounts.
• MediumOn 22 October 2024 FINRA censured and fined Interactive Brokers LLC $475,000. FINRA found that a change to the algorithm in its fully paid securities lending programme led the firm to create or increase segregation deficits in customer securities on several occasions, totalling about $30 million, and that its supervision of its possession and control obligations was not reasonably designed. The firm made restitution to affected customers and settled without admitting or denying the findings.

Not assessed in a desk audit. Spreads, slippage and fill quality can only be measured with live accounts.

Since 2020 US authorities have taken repeated enforcement action against Interactive Brokers LLC: a $38 million anti-money-laundering settlement with the SEC, FINRA and CFTC, $55 million in penalties over unrecorded staff messaging, an $11.8 million sanctions settlement with OFAC and a series of FINRA and exchange fines. No licence sanction or criminal proceedings were found.

• HighOn 10 August 2020 Interactive Brokers LLC settled anti-money-laundering charges with the SEC ($11.5 million penalty), FINRA ($15 million fine) and the CFTC ($11.5 million penalty and $706,214 disgorgement). The SEC found that over a one-year period the firm failed to file more than 150 suspicious activity reports on potential manipulation of microcap securities; the firm neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s findings.
• HighOn 29 September 2023 Interactive Brokers LLC and Interactive Brokers Corp. agreed to pay $35 million to the SEC and $20 million to the CFTC for failing to keep business communications that staff, including senior staff, sent through personal text and WhatsApp messages. The firms admitted the facts in the orders.
• HighOn 15 July 2025 OFAC announced that Interactive Brokers LLC had agreed to pay $11,832,136 to settle 12,367 apparent violations of US sanctions between July 2016 and January 2024, including services to persons in Iran, Cuba, Syria and Crimea. OFAC treated the violations as non-egregious and voluntarily self-disclosed.
• MediumOn 28 September 2021 the CFTC fined Interactive Brokers LLC $1.75 million for failing to prepare its trading system for negative crude oil futures prices on 20 April 2020, and ordered restitution of $82.57 million, which was credited in full because the firm had already compensated its customers.
• MediumFINRA fined Interactive Brokers LLC $3.5 million on 22 December 2023 over reviews of customer execution quality and $2.25 million on 30 December 2024 for failing to detect about 4.2 million free-riding transactions in cash accounts. On 30 September 2025 twelve options exchanges fined it $7.75 million in total for marking about 15.3 million contracts as customer rather than professional customer orders, and on 3 December 2025 Nasdaq fined it $900,000 over supervision of potentially manipulative trading through omnibus accounts. All were settled without admitting or denying the findings.
• LowOther matters since October 2018 include an NFA fine of $250,000 in April 2022 for cancelling retail customer forex orders, a CFTC penalty of $300,000 in June 2022 for overcharging customers $710,828.14 in exchange fees (refunded), and FINRA fines of $650,000 in August 2025 over options account approvals and $400,000 in April 2025 over customer complaint reporting. FINRA BrokerCheck lists 45 regulatory events resolved since 10 October 2018.
• ObservationA US class action over margin liquidations, filed in 2015, was settled with court approval on 17 June 2026: the company paid $5 million to the class and forgave about $1.8 million of debts, with no admission of liability.
• ObservationFINRA fined Interactive Brokers LLC $5.5 million on 17 August 2018 over Regulation SHO supervision, and Hong Kong’s SFC reprimanded and fined Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited HK$4.5 million on 14 February 2018 over its electronic and algorithmic trading systems. These decisions are more than eight years old, so they are recorded here but not scored.

Not assessed in a desk audit. Uptime, incident history and security controls require evidence from the firm or live monitoring.

No Great Place to Work certification was found. Interactive Brokers reports a workplace giving programme that matches employee donations and named charitable initiatives in its 2024 sustainability report.

• ObservationNo Great Place to Work certification was found in public sources.
• ObservationThe firm reports matching employee charitable donations up to USD 1,000 per employee, and its 2024 sustainability report names meal donations to Feeding America and Akshaya Patra and support for a community centre in Dublin. These are reported by the firm itself; we found no independent reporting.