This from the site feels reassuring: "Your funds are held in your name at Apex Clearing, one of the largest US Custodians holding over $114B in funds."
The "in your name" part is specifically what I was looking for.
The "in your name" part is specifically what I was looking for.
The thing that actually gives me the most reassurance is that they say definitively that they are a Registered Investment Advisor. In the Synapse situation, all the regulatory agencies were essentially saying "not my problem" because Synapse itself wasn't covered under any explicit regulatory regime. That doesn't seem to be the case here, but I'd feel better if the founders said something along the lines of "This is how we're different from Synapse..."
We are Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) regulated by the SEC.
As a startup, you must figure out how to convince ordinary people to change their family safety net. Full transparency, audits by a known firm, and an entire brochure/mini-site explaining every significant fintech failure, showing how my money would remain safe if that scenario happened again.
What? Their second largest bank, Credit Suisse, imploded only last year. They hold trillions because of their nominal neutrality (though their cooperation with western sanctions against Russians appears to be hurting this significantly) and banking secrecy laws that serve as shelter for proceeds for all sorts of crimes.
Nomenculture aside, depositors did not lose a single cent in that implosion, and it went smoother than the SVB one.