Pershing

More than ever before, it’s important to understand who’s “holding” the money you’ve invested. We wanted to take a moment to introduce our custodian to you.

Cetera Advisors helps supervise and facilitate the trading for investments and those assets are then held by Pershing LLC.

While a broker-dealer helps supervise and facilitate the trading that converts your cash into invested assets, those assets are actually held by a custodian. Cetera Advisors works with two custodians. Cetera Investment Services LLC custodies individual retirement accounts (IRAs) to ensure they meet Internal Revenue Code requirements for tax deferral. Pershing LLC custodies brokerage accounts (including the brokerage accounts within IRAs) and fulfills a legal responsibility for safeguarding your assets while also providing related administrative services on your behalf, including settlement of purchases, tax and account record keeping, monthly statements, confidentiality and data integrity protections, and more.

Pershing LLC is a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, the nation’s oldest continuously operating bank, and one of the world’s leading providers of securities services. Pershing custodies brokerage accounts for and provides related administrative services, including settlement of purchases, tax and account record keeping, monthly statements, confidentiality and data integration. Pershing is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), so securities in your account are protected up to $500,000.

Excess of SIPC Coverage Through Underwriters at Lloyd's and Other Commercial Insurers

In addition to SIPC protection, Pershing provides coverage in excess of SIPC limits from certain underwriters in Lloyd's insurance market and other commercial insurers. The excess of SIPC coverage is valid through February 10, 2020, for Pershing LLC accounts. It provides the following protection for Pershing LLC's global client assets:

• An aggregate loss limit of $1 billion for eligible securities—over all client accounts
• A per-client loss limit of $1.9 million for cash awaiting reinvestment—within the aggregate loss limit of $1 billion

SIPC and the excess of SIPC coverage do not protect against loss due to market fluctuation.

An excess of SIPC claim would only arise if Pershing failed financially and client assets for covered accounts—as defined by SIPC—cannot be located due to theft, misplacement, destruction, burglary, robbery, embezzlement, abstraction, failure to obtain or maintain possession or control of client securities, or to maintain the special reserve bank account required by applicable rules.

Like Cetera Advisors, Pershing must meet certain net capital requirements, and is subject to regular audits, both internally and by independent firms, to ensure the appropriate handling, segregation and protection of investors’ assets.

What does all this mean to you? It means that your money is held in deposit by a firm that works behind the scenes exclusively to support broker-dealers such as Cetera Advisors.