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Interactive Brokers Introduces Lower Futures Commissions

New “Unbundled”Commission Structure Is A First For The Industry Greenwich, Connecticut, USA—Interactive Brokers LLC (“IB”) has begun offering a new “unbundled”futures commission structure that provides its professional customers with a means of taking advantage of lower exchange product fees and provides discounts for volume. This new fee schedule explicitly charges for the execution, clearing, carrying, exchange, and regulatory costs of a futures trade by product with a sliding scale for volume. In addition, exchange members or professional customers who are part of a special exchange pricing program can now automatically receive the benefits of the special pricing in their IB unbundled rates. The new price structure went into effect on March 1.

“Some futures exchanges have recently lowered fees for certain classes of clients. In order to pass through such fee discounts directly to our clients, together with volume discounts, we’ve unbundled our commissions to reflect execution, clearing, carrying, and regulatory costs separately,”said Steve Sanders, Managing Director of Marketing and Business Development. “As futures exchanges automate and competition heats up, driving the exchanges to lower their fees, IB customers that choose the unbundled pricing structure and trade in volume will immediately be able to take advantage of the lower fees. This is yet another way IB is helping professional traders to minimize their trading costs.”

Although most customers will benefit from IB’s new unbundled price structure, those customers that prefer to remain with IB’s low bundled futures commission schedule may do so.
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We offer two pricing structures for futures. Bundled which is a fixed rate per contract, and unbundled which more closely matches the pricing structure of the exchanges, provides for volume discounts, and allows exchange discounts for members. Attached is a comparison of total bundled and unbundled fees for non-exchange members. If you are an institution and a member (or part of a member program) of a US or Canadian futures exchange, please contact a sales person for member discount information. All customers will be defaulted to the bundled pricing structure, and if a customer wants to change their futures pricing structure to unbundled, they can do this through Account Management/Commission Schedule.

*These fees are applied on a marginal basis for a given calendar month. If for example, you execute 1,000 US contracts in a month, your execution costs would be:
300 contracts at $1.00
700 contracts at $.70
** Charged for each net futures contract, net short call futures options, or net short put futures options on a single underlying for each calendar day the net futures position is held overnight.

About Interactive Brokers
IB, a global electronic brokerage firm based in Greenwich, Conn., provides institutions, independent investment advisors, introducing brokers, and active traders low cost direct access execution and clearing services for stocks, options, futures, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and single stock futures (SSFs) around the world from a single IB Universal AccountSM. IB is a member of the Interactive Brokers Group (“IBG”), which is comprised of electronic brokerage and proprietary trading firms, including Timber Hill LLC, a leading market maker of exchange-listed equity and index options. IBG employs approximately 450 traders, programmers, and support staff located in offices and exchanges throughout the world. Institutional Investor ranks IBG, with consolidated equity capital exceeds $1.6 billion, as the 25th largest securities brokerage group in the United States.