Free of Payment Transfer of Global Securities

The Transfer Positions screen lets you use a Basic Free of Payment (FOP) transfer to move assets from financial institutions that are generally outside the US. We will coordinate with your Canadian, European, Middle East/African, and Asia/Pacific financial institution to transfer global equities, fixed income, structured products, and options on a free-of-payment basis. You will need to instruct your broker separately in order for them to match our settlement instructions.

Inbound Basic FOP transfers are notifications only. You must instruct your third-party broker to transfer the assets to your IBKR account using the authorization form we provide at the end of the Basic FOP transfer request procedure.

When you select Free of Payment Transfer of Global Securities as the transfer method on the Position Transfers page, you can:

  • Enter a Basic FOP transfer, in which all of your assets are transferred from a third-party broker to your account (inbound), or from your IBKR account to a third-party broker.

  • Save new broker information, which lets you save and reuse third-party broker information for future Basic FOP transfers.

Your Account Name, Tax Identification Number and Client Type (i.e. individual, joint, Roth IRA), must exactly match the third-party broker account in order for the transfer to take place.

About Saved Broker Information

If you want to use your third-party broker for a Basic FOP transfer and save it in our system for future use, you must complete two tasks:

  1. Initiate a new Basic FOP transfer, but choose to save the new broker information. No transfer is performed in this step.
  2. Initiate a new Basic FOP transfer using the saved broker information. This is where you select the assets to transfer.

Note: You cannot simultaneously save new broker information and perform a transfer. The transfer must either be performed without saving the broker information, or the transfer must be performed after the broker information is saved.

For more information, visit the Fund Your Account page on our website.