What is going on with Interactive Brokers Japan? Any updates?

[eagleyes]

Is IBKR dealing with Tokutei Koza now or you still have to sort out your taxes by yourself (Ippan)?

[TokyoBoglehead]

I got an email a few days stating that my account transfer was complete but now I try to convert currency and I get this error:

Code: Select all

You are restricted to closing orders pending a response to our transfer invite. The transfer details and opportunity to accept or decline are here: https://ibkr.com/sso/Login

Anybody with the same issue?

They only deal in yen at present.

[Xanday]

They only deal in yen at present.

Thanks for the reply. You are totally right.
I contacted them just in case and it looks like there was also a close-only restriction in place that they kindly removed, so all good now

[FlamingWombat]

I finally got another email from them today saying I need to confirm the changeover by August 31st. So things should be moving again.

[tokyolights]

I wanna hijack this thread to ask about how y'all fund your IBs, since I got a friend who is saying that there is no reasonable way to do it at the moment. The Wise route charges you a lot in conversion fees (inside IB it appears to be no-fees for FX?), and the CitiBank route doesn't seem to work due to the strange account number they have. I found this thread from a while back and it appears that the best way is through an SMBC account with 800 yen fee. Has there been any further discoveries in this front?

[captainspoke]

I wanna hijack this thread to ask about how y'all fund your IBs, since I got a friend who is saying that there is no reasonable way to do it at the moment. The Wise route charges you a lot in conversion fees (inside IB it appears to be no-fees for FX?), and the CitiBank route doesn't seem to work due to the strange account number they have. I found this thread from a while back and it appears that the best way is through an SMBC account with 800 yen fee. Has there been any further discoveries in this front?

IB changed their services about a year ago (5/2022), and I'm pretty sure that old thread you quote is out of date (tho I'm not an IB customer/client).

IBLLC is no longer available to japan residents (this had been one good lifeline for US citizen investors here). Those customers have been migrated to IBSJ. I believe that you could fund an account there with a domestic (yen) transfer, and then buy whatever is on offer from them.

In the past, IBLLC did offer excellent f/x rates, IBSJ likely does, too.

[gaijin86]

It has been a year since the last post on this thread.
Anyone else still using IB LLC (the original IB in Japan, before they changed to a yen-based Japan-based broker)?
I understood they would "migrate" my account to the new yen-based Japan IB, but they have not done so, so far.

[Spa06Jc]

Hi gaijin86. I'm still on the original IB LLC and haven't had any suggestion of being migrated. I was living in slight fear for all of last year following the news that people were being shifted to the Japanese version but I personally haven't had any correspondence to suggest I will be moved.

And to tokyolight's question, using MUFG's television ATM desk to do an international wire transfer to IB's Japan Citi Bank account has been the way I have funded my IB account since I created it back in 2020. They've changed the charges a couple of times (originally 800jpy, then went down to 700jpy and now they charge 900jpy), but despite going through the foreign wire process, they charge under 1000jpy as it's a JPY to JPY transfer. Bit of a pain to have to go in person, but if you move a decent chunk, you can cut down your trips.

[gaijin86]

OK, thanks for update.

[Telebroker]

Hi gaijin86. I'm still on the original IB LLC and haven't had any suggestion of being migrated. I was living in slight fear for all of last year following the news that people were being shifted to the Japanese version but I personally haven't had any correspondence to suggest I will be moved.

Same her, using IBKR (LLC) since 2018; just got a congratulations message on this from IBKR but no notice / offering / force to transition anything to any entity.

And to tokyolight's question, using MUFG's television ATM desk to do an international wire transfer to IB's Japan Citi Bank account has been the way I have funded my IB account since I created it back in 2020. They've changed the charges a couple of times (originally 800jpy, then went down to 700jpy and now they charge 900jpy), but despite going through the foreign wire process, they charge under 1000jpy as it's a JPY to JPY transfer. Bit of a pain to have to go in person, but if you move a decent chunk, you can cut down your trips.

Similar here for SMBC (as I may have been the one who wrote the initial post on SMBC transfers to non-resident JPY accounts). It continues to work smoothly.
Using SMBC's online banking to do an "international" wire transfer to IB's Japan Citi Bank account (=non-resident) has been the way I have funded my IB account. Charge continues to remain unchanged, JPY 800 for the JPY to JPY transfer. No need to visit in person!
I am pretty sure it also continues to work with SMTB Prestia, in that case with a paper transfer form and over the counter branch visit; fee dependent on Prestia fee scheme tier.