Broker Asking Questions
My broker sent me this e-mail:
Dear RustyFork-
OptionsHouse (and all broker dealers) is required by the USA PATRIOT Act and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) to perform due diligence, in order to “know our customers”. Because of these regulations, OptionsHouse does periodic reviews of accounts and follows up with customers, if we feel we need more information in regards to account activity.
Your OptionsHouse account was recently reviewed, and it appears the deposits you are sending into your brokerage account are exceeding the financials you listed in your account application. You have listed a net worth of $100,000-$250,000, and liquid net worth of $50,000-$100,000, and your occupation as “unemployed”. Please explain the source of funds you are sending into your brokerage account.
Thank you,
Account Management
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My account is worth ~$30k.
What are they confused about? And why do they even care?
Know your customer and AML is big now, they're required to care.
Just be honest. Say you started selling pot to make the ends meet.
Right, but what are they suspicious about? 30
They're concerned that an unemployed person is coming up with (i assume somewhat) large deposits to risk on their platform. Laundering money through a broker is (and especially used to be) extremely commonplace so they want to get your response to the source of their funds for their due diligence. If their system triggered a red flag and they didn't respond to it, they could get blamed for ignoring warning sign if something were to happen.
The deposit amounts you are placing, or the ratio of funds in your account to your total liquid net worth, must have triggered a red flag in the broker's AML control system. It's not a big deal. AML/KYC is a huge issue now especially after high profile cases like HSBC last year. It is really more of a due diligence procedure on their end so they have a documented response from you.
As long as the source of your money is legit, the true answer will be good enough for their compliance people to check the box and move on.
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