Interactive Brokers rejected my inward wire transfer from Hong Kong

smokythebear2

I'm posting this to see if anyone else here in Cayman has experienced this issue. A few weeks back I sent a wire transfer from my corporate bank account in Hong Kong which is for my Cayman Exempt company to Interactive Brokers. The payment was immediately frozen and so I wasn't able to make the investments I transferred the funds to the account in order to make. It's complete BS and I'm frustrated by the fact that I've now missed out on the buying opportunity and my funds were held for 7 days before being returned to me without any interest being paid.

The reason finally given to me by Interactive Brokers (which was like pulling teeth) was that because my bank account in Hong Kong has nothing to do with me being in Cayman that they rejected the transfer. Sounds like a load of crap to me and doesn't make any sense as I've sent many transfers from this bank account in Hong Kong to Interactive Brokers over the years.

Has anyone else here in Cayman experienced something like this. I can easily get a bank account in the US or elsewhere including Cayman so perhaps I'll do this if I decide to keep using Interactive Brokers. To be honest though this has left a very sour impression of this company with me now.

admin

Interactive Brokers have been under pressure since being fined close to $40 million dollars due to lax AML. As a result they have clamped down and made changes to their requirements where funds tied to an account can originate from. I don't think this is limited either exclusively to corporate accounts. Trust, personal and other account types with
Interactive Brokers would be subject to the same requirement.

The solution for you would be to create a bank account in Cayman for your company then fund that account and transfer funds from there to your IB account. That should solve the problem and you should be all good if you do this.

You're not the first person I've heard this happening to. If you search on Reddit you'll find that there are many other people who are international clients of IB that have gone through the same thing.

therealdeal

That's real BS but it does sound like it has to due with compliance requirements on the part of Interactive Brokers. You'll probably find that this is how most brokerage services would do things when dealing with clients located offshore. Even though Cayman nor Hong Kong are currently on any blacklists I'd imagine that brokerage services located outside of these jurisdictions in high taxed jurisdictions like the US, Canada or the UK will treat your accounts very differently.