Wealth Protection Safeguarding Assets
The most important difference in having an independent and unaffiliated custodian is that the investment advisor initiates transactions as part of its portfolio management responsibility and the custodian clears transactions as part of its safekeeping responsibility. The custodian has no investment authority (unless assigned for overnight excess cash balance sweep management) but serves to provide an audit trail of all the activity within an investment account. Charles Schwab institution manages over $2 trillion in assets, has online account access and reporting and strong credit ratings from Moody’s (A2), S&P (A) and Fitch (A). TD Ameritrade has over 6.6 million client accounts, over $660 billion in assets and solid credit ratings from Moody’s (A3), S&P (A) [as of 2016].
TD Ameritrade, Inc. is one of the firms that we use to custody our client assets. TD Ameritrade, Miracle Mile Advisors, and the other entities named are separate and unaffiliated firms, and are not responsible for each other’s services or policies. TD Ameritrade does not endorse or recommend any advisor and the use of the TD Ameritrade logo does not represent the endorsement or recommendation of any advisor. Brokerage services provided by TD Ameritrade Institutional, Division of TD Ameritrade, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC. TD Ameritrade is a trademark jointly owned by TD Ameritrade IP Company, Inc. and The Toronto-Dominion Bank. Used with permission.