Considering employment with a brokerage—Vanguard accounts??

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verbose
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Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:05 am

Considering employment with a brokerage—Vanguard accounts??

Post by verbose »

My husband is negotiating an employment offer with a brokerage. I’m concerned about having to move our investments if he becomes employed there. I don’t want to move any of them.

We have the following:

Taxable:
Apple stock on a paper certificate. There is no account. The shares are recorded by CompuShare.

Retirement:
401k with current employer, both spouses
Trad IRA and Roth IRA (both of us have one each) at Vanguard
UTMA accounts with me as custodian, two, at Vanguard

The accounts at Vanguard are entirely composed of Vanguard mutual funds.

I’ve been ignoring all entreaties to “upgrade” these accounts to brokerage accounts for this reason. My husband and I are both software developers. There are at least 4 brokerages with major IT presence in our metro area. We’ve both contracted with a few and employment has always been a possibility.

Does anyone know if we can keep the investments where they are if he becomes a brokerage employee?
oslocal
Posts: 144
Joined: Sat May 21, 2016 5:30 pm

Re: Considering employment with a brokerage—Vanguard accounts??

Post by oslocal »

This will be dependent on what your new employer's compliance department's rules are.

Assuming you or your spouse will be associated with FINRA, they require the employer to review (i.e. obtain copies) of your and your spouse's brokerage statements. You may need to pre-clear trades etc. which makes betterment very difficult to use. You may also be required to provide real-time notification from your accounts - all the big firms support this, including vanguard, but perhaps not startups like robinhood.

There's usually an exemption for securities like US Treasuries, CDs, and open ended investment companies (Mutual Funds). Also account that can only transact in these exempt securities may also be exempt from reporting. - 401k and Vanguard mutual fund accounts should fall in that category.

I think for the most part you should be okay, except they're likely going to require you to hold Apple shares in street name.
oslocal
Posts: 144
Joined: Sat May 21, 2016 5:30 pm

Re: Considering employment with a brokerage—Vanguard accounts??

Post by oslocal »

I should clarify that in this case there's a distinction between ETF and Mutual Funds. Since the ETF is exchange traded, it's likely to be lumped in with the more restrictive rules that apply to individual stocks (easier to monitor that way).
For example, no short term trading (minimum 30 day holds). You could get around this with exempt securities (e.g. mutual funds) - except with Vanguard, since they impose those restrictions on their own.
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