Which Broker/Investment Company Offers The Best Protection Against Fund Theft/Mis-Use and Mitigation Strategies?

[MrCheapo]

Like most of us here I'm counting on my retirement accounts to be there. With things like ID theft and even simple embezzlement rising this raises the real concern of money being stolen from retirement accounts.

Q1) Has anyone done a recent deep dive to determine if any of the broker/investment companies have better protection? Ideally, you'd want a "visa-style" protection where they make you whole if the transaction was fraudulent (i.e ID theft) and even due to your own error (i.e. Lost credit card gets mis-used) if reported in a timely fashion. When I looked at this a few years ago, it wasn't clear at all if any stood out and infact it was quite alarming that most had clauses that said if your account is hacked then it's probably your fault and you are to blame.

I have largish accounts at Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab but would be happy to move them to another platform if they offer better protection.

Q2) What are people doing to prevent your retirement accounts being stolen?

[MrCheapo]

It looks like there has been quite a few changes in the last few years.

I'll partially answer my own question.

Schwab has a very clear and strong policy closest to a Visa-style no-fault policy.

"Schwab will cover losses in any of your Schwab accounts due to unauthorized activity."
https://www.schwab.com/schwabsafe/security-guarantee

Fidelity has a good one as well.

"Fidelity will reimburse you for losses from unauthorized activity in your Covered Accounts occurring through no fault of your own."
https://www.fidelity.com/security/custo ... -guarantee

Vanguard's one has some exclusions. In particular doesn't cover 529 and annuitiies and seems to put stronger hurdles on you in terms of password protection etc.
https://investor.vanguard.com/ts/pdf/va ... -fraud.pdf