No. of Recommendations: 7
I've almost finished moving all of my assets out of Interactive Brokers, most recently another chunk yesterday.
I used to think highly of the platform 10 years ago, but my mind rapidly changed after recently opening up accounts with 3 other brokers. My original plan was to simply take advantage of some generous transfer bonuses the other brokerages had, then move my money back to IB, because I assumed those other brokers would pale in comparison.
Instead, I found every one of them vastly easier and intuitive to use, less bug free, and with most of the benefits I was getting with IB, and in some areas more. IB's user interface (UX) is still in the stone age, while other brokerages have innovated leaps and bounds in every area. And IB used to have not just the best margin rates and idle cash rates, but unbeatable ones - but now? No longer even the best. Some other gripes: their policy of "we'll do margin calls whenever we like at any time policy" seems, on paper at least, far more punitive than other brokerages that offer advance warnings. And I've always found their customer support in the lowest tier.
But the last straw that prompted my recent asset move was me trying to do one simple task: add my wife's name to my account (i.e., to make it a joint account) so that I can transfer assets to bank accounts in her name more easily. Determining how to do that was challenging enough, and ended up with me having to create a brand new account and then link the two. Then when I tried to transfer assets over, it failed with a cryptic message. (Turns out, I needed to add additional trading permissions just to do this transfer). Then it still errored out, for some unknown reason that IB support never shared but required their manual intervention. Score: Loads of confusion, 4 customer support contacts, and 2 weeks later, this simple action is done.
And so am I, ugh. I'm shocked IBKR stock continues skyrocketing to new heights every day.
