So I got around to making an IBSJ account and yeah…not impressed at all. The on boarding process took a month, holidays and all that, I’ll give them some slack. But really, a month!? For a cash account? Okay, it gets better. After receiving a letter and waiting a couple more days for approval I get in! I have an account! Oh but, you can’t do anything with it and have trouble logging in due to password errors. Also you can only be logged in on one device at a time. CS just says, “yeah, it takes up to 48 hours before you’re able to trade after account approval.” Okay…so maybe say that next time or better yet, take more time (you’ve already taken a lot anyway) and don’t approve it until it’s ready next time. Thanks.
Then I get another email telling me that I need to register with JASDEC in order to trade Japanese stocks and the process will take about a week. Wow…imagine that… I need to register separately to trade Japanese stocks on my Japanese stock brokerage account….You’d think that this would have been part of the account signup process for an account at “Interactive Brokers Securities JAPAN.” Am I crazy? Am I unreasonable? Oh boy, let’s see if they even accept it because I have a middle name. They’re giving me the FULL local city-hall experience. Sasuga Japan. I suppose they’ll want to register my official inkan next too? “Please hanko and submit by fax before we can process a limit buy.”
Oh and to top it off Katakana input doesn’t work with Microsoft IME on their bank registration windows. I guess not a big deal as you can use numbers but when they have the option to “search by bank name” I would just expect it to accept katakana like it told me to input in the instructions….
TLDR: IBSJ sign up is annoying even by Japan standards. Yes, I’m whining. No, I can’t wait until the Thursday thread.
by Zebracakes2009