Do I own my shares?

With Stake, there are lots of ways your cash, securities, and data are safe and protected. 

Wall St Share Ownership

When you purchase shares through Stake, you own the shares. However, the way in which share ownership is done in the US is a little bit different to Australian equities. In the US, most brokers (including Stake) operate on a custodian model.

The custodian ownership model means that your shares are held in custody by the custodian (Velox Clearing & Citibank) and the books and records (nominating these shares as being in your name) are managed by our US broker-dealer DriveWealth.

Our Partners

It’s worth noting that Stake never holds or touches your money - your money goes directly to our regulated FX partner and then onto DriveWealth. When you withdraw your funds, it's the same, just the other way around.

Insurance

The US broker, DriveWealth, LLC is a US broker-dealer registered with FINRA (US regulator) and is a member of SIPC, which protects customers of Stake who have US securities for up to $500,000 (including $250,000 for claims for cash). You can read more about SIPC on their website. 

This protects you, as a non-U.S. citizen with an account at a brokerage firm that is a member of SIPC. Stake customers are treated the same as a resident or citizens of the United States. 

Please note that SIPC does not protect against the decline in the value of your securities. SIPC gets involved when a brokerage firm fails and SIPC appoints a trustee to manage the liquidation of the firm for the protection of customers.

In the unlikely situation that Stake goes down, you would still have access to all your cash and securities. 

Our broker partner, DriveWealth and the custodians will establish access for customers if anything happens to Stake.

Account Security

You have full control of your account and can enable advanced security in the form of 2 Factor Authentication (using an app like Google Authenticator or Authy) at any time.  

Data

We work to meet the highest standards of privacy regimes in Australia and all the markets we operate.  As we are also a UK-regulated firm, we adhere to a privacy policy that is set out in accordance with GDPR.  

In terms of storing data, we encrypt and store all your data securely with AWS. 

More information is available in our Privacy Policy.