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Terms of Service: The Five Clauses Worth Reading
Nobody reads them. Five specific provisions determine what happens to your money in the cases that matter.
| Entry type | guide |
|---|---|
| Section | comparison tables |
| Last verified | |
| Compiled by | Reference Desk |
Terms of service run to thousands of words. Five clauses contain what actually matters and they are findable by searching.
1. Which legal entity
Search for the entity name. It frequently differs from the brand, and it determines which regulator supervises the relationship and which country’s law applies.
Check that entity in the public register of the country where you live. If it is not there, it is not authorised there.
2. Asset segregation
Search for segregated, commingled, or client assets.
The question is whether your holdings are legally separate from the firm’s own and bankruptcy-remote. Where they are, an insolvency should return them. Where they are not, you become an unsecured creditor.
This is the single most consequential paragraph in the document.
3. What happens in an insolvency
Frequently a separate clause. It states how client assets are treated and, in some terms, explicitly warns that customers may rank as unsecured creditors.
Where a venue states that plainly, it is being honest about a genuine risk. Where terms are silent, the answer is determined by the law of the governing jurisdiction and by the actual custody arrangements.
4. Suspension and account closure
Search for suspend, terminate, or restrict.
What triggers it, what notice you receive, and how you recover your assets. Terms permitting suspension at sole discretion with no notice are common and worth knowing about before it happens.
5. Changes to the terms
How the firm may change them and what notice you receive. Frequently the answer is that continued use constitutes acceptance.
This matters after an acquisition, when the entity and the terms can both change with a notification most people acknowledge without reading.
The twenty-minute review
Read those five clauses, check the entity in the register, and look at the published fee schedule.
That is enough to know what you are actually agreeing to, and it is considerably more than most users do before depositing.
Venues that make the entity, the segregation position and the fee schedule findable without an account, such as a regulated European platform, have made the review straightforward. Where any of the three requires registration to see, that is itself informative.
The recheck
After any acquisition, restructuring or notified change.
Counterparty risk is not static. The firm you assessed when you opened an account may not be the one holding your assets in two years.
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